Company: Deloitte
Date: 2009-10-14
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former

Great firm - good place to work; more operations than strategy focused
Pros: - "up or out' means a promotion every 2-4 years
- given a lot of flexibility, autonomy and authority at each level - particularly senior manager (really treated like an associate partner)
- good informal mentoring culture - if you have relationships with partners, managers can always count on candid, good career advice
- have relationships with tremendous number of firms - can use network to get almost any meeting at least once if you have good content
- good pricing practice - does true strategy/ revenue growth work
- very comfortable place to work - collegial culture, no "screamers" allowed, team ownership for results, reasonable expectations
- very, very talented staff at all levels in strategy and operations/ general management consultancy - smart, motivated and fun
- great brand name/ reputation in job marketplace
- very people friendly HR policies and benefits packages, firm very supportive if employees have family emergencies
- great infrastructure in terms of CRM, ERP, T&E, knowledge management, graphics, offshore/ low cost data analysis - all the dumb administrative stuff that should be easy is pretty easy as a rule with few exceptions
- rigorous, disciplined and standardized recruiting process including great case studies - I would not have to spend more than 15-20 minutes preparing to be an interviewer everything was built for me, easy to follow and consistent across interviews (this is part of the reason the staff is so good)
Cons: - "up or out" makes being a senior manager/ assoc partner very stressful
- very clique-ish, relationship based culture - who you know and who knows you and visibility to key partners counts a lot in performance reviews, compensation and selection to partner
- tend to be "tracked" into a pretty narrow functional "swim lane" (e.g., supply chain planning, shared services, pricing)  and can be difficult to get the breadth of experience promised/ advertised from consulting
- definitely a little s (strategy) big O (operations) firm.  Only a few industries (notably telecoms) or or select clients hire the firm to really focus on ways to drive growth in their business.  Rare to see Deloitte hired by board to conduct review of growth opportunities (even before the recession) - again some exceptions notably telecoms
- went through some pretty nasty overcapacity challenges
- onerous regulatory requirements associated with any consultancy attached to an audit firm - reporting financial holdings, having to ask spouse/ domestic partner about their debt and credit card holdings (minor but annoying)
- the long hours and hectic schedules that are "par for the course" in consulting are true at Deloitte
- country based unit values mean the firm isn't truly global
- limited opportunities to work internationally or abroad and they are generally not career enhancing because you are away from your core network and not making any money for the U.S. partners - I was offered a 1-2 year assignment in Europe as a manager.  Several Partners told me that if I took the assignment and did well it "wouldn't hurt your career that badly"