Company: Deloitte
Date: 2020-04-27
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

The GPS Practice is where it's at!
Pros: There are a lot of positives that come from being a part of the GPS Practice. I will list a few of the ones that mean the most to me:

1. Work Life Balance - Because most of our clients in GPS are government organizations, most projects do not allow you to charge more than a certain amount of hours in a given week. This means that I don't work crazy hours like the auditors and have an incredible work balance that is close to unmatched when starting out in a career.

2. Impactful work - The work I am doing and have access to is directly helping US government agencies, meaning that I indirectly affect every citizen of the US. It also helps that many projects you can work on are doing mission critical work that many agencies cannot go without. Even if you're young and just starting your career, you will get a lot of responsibility. There are some things that I do where I'm shocked I'm working on these things at my young age. This makes for incredible talking points and resume boosters.

3. The Culture - While the firm culture is more or less the same, the culture on your individual project will vary. I would say that the firm culture is satisfactory. It is a huge company, so change does take time to implement. But, the company has its values in the right place from my stand-point and I am overall happy with the tone at the top. One example of this is that the company is handling the COVID-19 pandemic really well and the mantra of "putting our people first" has really been echoed constantly. My project has a incredible culture and I really feel like I am friends with my colleagues. Aside from one or two individuals, everyone on my team (of 60 people) are smart, driven, helpful, friendly, and young(er). It makes for a work environment where I feel I belong and I am proud to be a part of such a high performing team.

4. The Benefits - The pay is incredible for the amount that I work. Health Insurance is good if you pay a premium. PTO is excellente!! 5 weeks a year can be accrued at the minimum (and it rolls over a year). There is a well-being subsidy for related purchases. And, I get to build a network that is so expansive it's not even funny. As we all should know - sometimes it is not what you know, it is who you know.
Cons: Here are a few things I don't particularly enjoy about Deloitte:

1. The Size - While the size of the firm is good for some obvious reasons, I think that working at such a big company can have its downsides. For one, changes take time to implement across the company. I've also noticed that it's a little intimidating to get used to all of the resources available to you. And sometimes, you only find out about something if it comes up in conversation. But if you ask the right questions and seek the right mentors, it won't be as intimidating to navigate the firm. 

2 - End of Year Performance Review - I'm not gonna go into details here, but from what I can tell it is not the best it can be. There are probably ways to make it more comprehensive, but I do understand the balance between efficiency and information when review hundreds of thousands of employee's performance.