Company: Deloitte
Date: 2013-10-26
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

Post-acquisition pains; remains to be seen what happens down the road.
Pros: The people here are fantastic and it is here that the remnants of Ubermind persist. Fun, engaging, and talented; I love them all. The hiring bar for all departments is high.

No expense was spared on our studio workspace (beautiful design/layout) and the equipment (high end Apple hardware across the board) we use. The Seattle studio is in a great, easily accessible neighborhood surrounded by other tech companies (Adobe, Tableau, Google, Groundspeak, among others). We have free snacks/drinks, kayaks and a Makerbot and various other cool toys and perks.

Work-life balance (on most projects) is fantastic. In general, you will work 40 (and only 40) hours per week here. Great if you have a family and/or generally value your life outside of work.

You'll have a chance (note: see the cons) to work on some very high profile projects for some huge clients here. You'll be doing work that a lot of people will see and use; it's easy to explain what I do to friends and family. "Here, download this app...I worked on the team that made that."
Cons: Project pipeline is very dry--or at least appears to be. There's also been a noticeable shift towards Deloitte-style projects which don't fit with the studio culture or operating model. Most of us--engineers included--are here because we want to do flashy user-facing, design and UX-focused applications...and because that's what we're good at. 

If you're a software engineer or designer, there's absolutely no good reason to even consider moving into the "normal" part of the firm, while career progression within the studio itself is constrained by Deloitte's fairly rigid promotion and compensation model. Compensation isn't quite market rate, especially when you factor it against the stock/equity grants and bonuses paid out by most of the product-oriented tech companies out there (Deloitte is not a "bonus culture" and entry-level people aren't eligible at all). There are armies of recruiters from all sorts of product companies circling this place...

Also, lots of rumblings about continued offshoring. Terrible idea, that.

Deloitte itself is driven by all sorts of arbitrary metrics, and that just doesn't jive well with software development. Things like "learning hours" (of which we have to do nearly a week's worth per year on top of our normal responsibilities). Are you kidding me? Absolutely silly; my job itself involves continuous and substantial learning by definition. It's how I stay relevant! Utilization targets and other requirements are slowly creeping upward every year. I can't imagine this will have a positive effect on the internal culture or recruiting and retention down the line.