Company: Deloitte
Date: 2011-09-28
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former

Great work and great people. Just be prepared to travel and work constantly every Monday - Thursday.
Pros: *  You will work with senior exec's of Fortune 500 clients from day 1
*  Opportunity to do very high level strategy and operations improvement focused engagements folks in industry can only dream of doing
*  You own your own career - you have the freedom to select the industries, clients, and projects that interest you
*  You will be constantly pushed to perform at the next level, constantly learning, and constantly challenging yourself
*  The culture is fantastic, and for the most part you'll work with fun colleagues
*  Excellent benefits - 23+ days off per year, solid 401K match,  10 holidays
*  Time off is encouraged and respected 
*  3-4-5 schedule is generally respected
*  Weekend work is pretty rare
Cons: *  Get ready to work yourself to death every Monday through Friday.  While you'll have most weekends free, you are completely at the mercy of your engagement manager, principal, and client every Monday - Thursday.
*  BRUTAL travel schedule.  You'll be on the road every Monday - Thursday of every week.  After you get used to the points and dinners, it becomes incredibly taxing.  
*  You can never do enough.  In addition to client service work, there's an extremely heavy emphasis on "Extracurriculars"  (eg, recruiting, white papers, in office initiatives).  It makes a 50-60 hour workweek a 60-70 hour workweek.  
*  Subjective year end ratings.  Get ready to network, network, network with the principals in your local office
*  Forced year end rating distribution in a firm fill of high performing consultants means many, many high performers still receive an "average" rating and therefore average comp increases.
*  Mediocre salary increases unless you are a top, top ranked performer or tightly networked into your local office