Company: Deloitte
Date: 2013-08-18
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Good company overall. Risk Services service line in Australia is broken and has poisonous culture.
Pros: The broader Australian firm has good leadership, smart people and provides a platform for career growth, particularly in the Consulting service line. On balance, I enjoyed my time and came away with a whole new set of skills and experience, so the personal development and breath of work was great.

The Australian firm has also done well to recover from a very bad market position 10 years ago to being fairly strong in the market. This has left the firm with a more nimble and entrepreneurial culture than some competitors.
Cons: The Risk Services service line has an strategic and identity crisis. 

The overseas ERS equivalents in the US/UK have grown strongly in non-audit areas to provide a solid platform for growth, but the local practice is stuck in a downward spiral. It lacks depth of consulting/SI capability, is losing good partners/staff, and lacks client credibility for tackling engagements that go beyond tick-and-bash auditing, whilst the remaining partners only really know how to do audits. The firm has also made several acquisitions of technology companies in the last 5 years into Risk Services, which have not succeeded from a cultural perspective and the acquired staff have generally moved on.

I also witnessed partners bullying junior and mid-level members of staff, and despite this being an open secret, there wasn't much evident intervention.