Company: Deloitte
Date: 2015-09-08
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Opens Doors!
Pros: The best part about working for Deloitte is the sheer amount of doors that open as a result of having Deloitte Consulting on your resume and LinkedIn profile. I agree with others in that Deloitte is a great place to launch a career.
Cons: Here are a few cons:

1. National compensation model means that pay generally isn't competitive in most major cities, especially San Francisco and NYC. The MBA hires from the top 20 schools make drastically different pay than those without the MBA and experienced hires, yet everyone does the same work. I definitely understand the prestige of an MBA from a top tier school, but as an experienced hire with a graduate degree from one of the selected schools PLUS additional years of work experience I still made significantly less. 

2. High degree of variability of experience due to project circumstance and project leadership teams. Sure, some projects allow you to work virtually and expense grand dinners; others, not so much. There is a huge spectrum for middle managers, ranging from young homegrown managers who have great skillsets and are ambitious but can lack perspective, to experienced consulting and industry hires that fall all over the place. In SF there are too many mediocre managers. As a A/C/SC you have to actively work to avoid being staffed on their projects.

2a. Concept of local projects/resources means that in certain home offices you will be staffed on a majority of local projects. This means you don't get to expense costs (though some exceptions are made) and commute times in cities like SF are easily 2 hours daily. 

3. There is a strong push for practitioners to "build their brand and network." All fine and good in terms of taking ownership of your career, something that makes good sense regardless of where you are in your career. However at Deloitte, the ratio of junior staff to leaders is much different than anywhere else I've worked before. This means that you have to almost compete for time with leaders (not middle management, where there is great variability). I think this is unfortunate and the "forced networking" aspect of Friday afternoons in the office are enough to turn off any introvert.