Company: Deloitte
Date: 2014-04-26
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Good for some, but not for me
Pros: Good opportunities for training (both internally and externally) and career growth.  From working there, I really learned to take charge of my career.  Despite being a Software Developer, I liked the emphasis put on skills such as communication, teamwork, networking, and industry knowledge, in addition to technical skills.  This has definitely helped me to grow and stand out in my field. 

Internal initiatives allow employees to explore new career areas outside of client work.  

Benefits are good, and so are the amount of available PTO days.
Cons: Work/life balance can be very poor.  While I worked on projects where this wasn't the case, I was working 80+ hours at my last project there.  There were even some weeks where I worked around the clock.  The last straw came when I had a conference call that went from 9pm to 2am in the morning, only to have my manager call me the following morning at 7am to see if I was up working again, despite the late night.  Mind you that I had to be at the client site that same morning.  It was a non-stop cycle.  I can honestly say that since I've left that I make way more money, work way less hours, and I'm able to enjoy other parts of my life now.  

In addition to client work hours, the internal initiatives were forced on all employees, and if you didn't do a lot of them, you would be evaluated harshly at Year-End.  This caused a lot of people to just "check the box", particularly with community service activities, where I would hear people constantly say things like they're just "getting their hours in".  I'm sorry but I feel like you should have a purpose for doing volunteer work, not just because Deloitte tells you to do it. 

There is a lot of favoritism at the firm as well, more than I've seen at any other job that I've had. I also felt that there was little to no respect for experienced hires.  Which was unfortunate because I found that most people that grew up in the Deloitte culture were very generalized and didn't have the skill set that experienced hires had.  Many of the young analysts were also very rude, arrogant, and disrespectful, and I felt that senior management encouraged this kind of behavior.  

I could seriously go on and on, but this highlights some of my biggest complaints.  If you're one that wants to live life, and not be chained to a job, be very very cautious before deciding to come to Deloitte.  I would also forewarn anyone who has a family (poor work/life, no regard for family duties), or someone who (like myself) is in a very tech-focused field (much of Deloitte's tech consulting firm is "process" based - they have very few software development projects).