Company: Deloitte
Date: 2017-12-05
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Work-life balance claims are disingenuous
Pros: PTO
Medical/dental/vision benefits
Pension
Generous travel allowance (stayed at the Ritz Carlton on the regular)
Cons: PTO (I'll explain below)
Work-life balance
Up-or-out culture

You do indeed get a lot of PTO, however, that PTO counts against you because it hits the main metric that is your everything statistic which is utilization. Basically, in order to take a care free vacation you have to work twice as hard to offset those non-productive PTO hours so your utilization rate will remain high. My last year there I was at ~125% utilization, had stellar feedback from my director and senior manager, and still only received an "average" rating. I saw many good, hard-working people get put on a performance improvement plan because their utilization rate wasn't at a suicidal level...

I think the only reason Deloitte wins Working Mother Best Place to Work and other similar awards that imply the firm has a solid work-life balance approach is due to the option to go part-time. Part-timers have a supreme amount of flexibility so sure, if they are taking those people into account then yeah, the work-life balance is amazing. However, for those of us that were full-time, you're nothing more than a hour billing machine to be oiled and milked for every last penny. I had some nights that I worked so hard and long that it didn't make sense to go to bed to only get an hour of sleep before I had to hop in the shower and get ready for my next day.

The culture is very clique driven. If you work outside of the mothership (DC area) you are at a severe disadvantage because you can't participate in the popularity contest that drives finding project work. People would brag about working on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and other holidays because that's what is expected of you if you want to advance. I stayed for a few years to get some resume beef and some excellent experience, then I had to move on otherwise the job was going to literally kill me.