Company: Deloitte
Date: 2012-10-10
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Not a Good Place for Experienced Hires
Pros: This review is for Deloitte Consulting - Strategy and Operations 
* Constant learning
* Always working on different projects, doing new things. No dull moment. 
* Exposure to the highest levels of organization. Great exposure to the enterprise and how everything comes together from the highest levels
* Working together with a lot of smart and talented people
Cons: Cons:
These cons are written from an experienced hire perspective, as someone who's joined the firm with many years of work experience:

* Do not join the firm as a consultant or senior consultant if you are around 33-35 or older. It will take more from you than you'll gain from being here. And most of it is emotional scars which are difficult to foresee but leave long lasting impacts.

* When you come in as an experienced hire and especially from smaller companies, they will place you at least 1 but probably 2 levels below than what you'd have in mind based on what you are doing in your current job. The partners will sweet talk you that this is ok and with all this experience you can get promoted very quickly once you outperform your peers
--- In reality this doesn't work like that. When they put a mid 30s guy to compete against 27 year old fresh MBA graduates you are set up to lose
--- Also you get typecast based on your title. Although you can do a manager's or senior manager's job, you will be treated as a C/SC and will be asked stuff that you may have done years ago but can't do as fast as you used to

* When you get in everybody will emphasize the importance of networking. What it means is
--- You will get staffed on projects only if you know somebody
---- You will get promoted only if people especially Partners/Directors/Principles or SMs who know you speak well about you during the review meeting In other words, if you are from the NY office but has worked on projects where the P/P.Ds or SMs are from other offices, they won't be talking on your behalf and all the good work you may have done will not count towards anything.  
--- Also building a network takes a pretty long time especially in a large firm like this. As an experienced hire you have very little chance to compete against people who join the firm as campus recruits who start as a class and build relationships amongst themselves which they carry into future. As an experienced hire, you don't have this setup. You are left to your own abilities to meet people who have influence in the firm
---- Also remember that P/P/Ds and SMs are nurturing staff who they think are good candidates to become future P/P/Ds. You make a judgement call, who they will spend more time nurturing - A younger person with many years in front of them or an experienced hire?

* The key metric in this firm is your client hours. Any other type of work, like firm activities or internal groups will not count towards anything if your haven't met your client hour goals regardless how great your Performance Evaluations are. 

* You will be interviewed and your internal references will be checked before you get staffed in anyy project. It somebody says something negative about you you will not get staffed on that project and same managers won't call you again

* This firm is very similar to a military academy or a fraternity. You have to go through the hazing process, put in your time. If you are an experienced hire over 30s, rethink your decision to join the firm. 

* The culture is very aggressive. No doubt the place is full of very smart and talented people but this doesn't make them good managers. You are at all times expected to kiss ass and stroke the egos of the people above. If you say once "No" to something you will not be considered for anything else again by the same person even if you have a legitimate reason. 
--- This also makes this firm very hierarchical. If you have a different idea than the person(s) above you and contradict them or explain where you are coming from you will be considered as defensive or not a good team player.
--- Because of this extremely hierarchical structure, things get changed and modified very often because somebody above says something different. And because of the egos every person above you has an opinion of how things should be. Usually there is no upfront planning to avoid  multiple iterations of the same work. You work with your manager and produce something, then his or her manager changes things completely and it goes on in this fashion. The team doesn't usually come together and talk in detail what needs to be done. Every level reacts to what you put in front of them and this creates a very inefficient process to produce something