Accenture

Accenture:

• Excellent parental leave policy
• Excellent philanthropic opportunities

Project:

• $4/month per person for team lunch
• Flextime, core hours 09:00-16:00, bandwidth 08:00-17:00

Accenture:

• Below market value, non-negotiable pay.
• Difficulty attracting and retaining hardworking, talented, socially appropriate, agreeable, and polished employees due to pay and project-specific culture.
• Not invested in improving working conditions on very unhealthy client site.

Project:

• Inaccurate job title and description (those hired as Java developers are purely SQL developers, unless hired as an agile Java developer in which case one does actually work with Java; roughly 85% of the work is not strictly technical, i.e. waterfall documentation, documentation review, some functional requirement analysis, unit testing, string testing).
• High attrition at multiple levels (team leads, high-level employees, and lower-level employees; this project lost about 20 employees in August 2017 alone) leading to decreased project knowledge and morale and leading to increased work per employee and frequent team shuffling.
• Very low employee engagement in team building activities and events; management seems to believe that throwing one impromptu ice cream party, creating "Action Points" and other palliative measures will address the deep problems here affecting satisfaction and thus retention and productivity.
• Management out of touch with employees; what they believe employees think, feel, and do are very different from employees' reality.
• Very high levels of bureaucracy and frustration due to very outdated technology and project culture.
• No opportunity to develop modern, in-demand skills on the job.
• Training opportunities relevant to the job or strongly encouraged by Accenture are denied due to cost (e.g. for even minimal travel and overtime); not given overtime for training but not allowed time in our 40 hours for training and encouraged to complete training unpaid because it is "good for you anyway."
• Home office very out of touch with project (fault of both the project and the office; we are usually unable to attend meetings and social events due to transportation, chargeability, and very low project support and interest).
• For my role specifically: overtime most weeks and weekends; team lead has very weak leadership skills (e.g. team building, individualization).