Company: Deloitte
Date: 2012-05-21
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current

Excellent opportunities for personal/professional growth...difficult to attain work-life balance
Pros: -People who care about you and your development; with both hard and soft skills.
-Hands-on experience, online training, and vendor training for some of the hottest technologies are readily available.
-Simply the best in terms of talent...you're working with the best and brightest in the workforce.
-Great client exposure.
-Salary is extremely competitive.
-Benefits are extremely competitive.
-Great resume-booster.
-This place is the embodiment of capitalism. All about competition. The slackers and those who don't add value stick out like a sore thumb. And the firm is the better for it. When everyone you work with is motivated to do a great job on everything they touch, things get done. They get done well and done quickly.
Cons: -90% of your satisfaction with the firm depends on your project (e.g. if project is understaffed or poorly-managed, you can be stuck in a rough spot for several months...granted you can always add value by performing at a high level in your role, success rarely hinges on a single analyst's ability to add value). 

-Continuing education classes, compliance training, practice development activities, firm activities, Impact Day, recruiting, all-hands events, service line meetings, Deloitte holidays, government holidays, all count against your utilization. Utilization refers to your requirement to spend 95% of the 2080 hours in the year (52 weeks * 40 hours/week) on client work, which doesn't include any of the things listed above. Usually everything totals to anywhere between 50 and 70 hours per week of work, and the non-client work actually ends up forcibly distracting you from your client work, which is supposed to be a priority.

-Retirement benefits are practically non-existent...vesting and accrual start around year 3, with puny matching contributions.