Accenture

• Wonderful place for diversity candidates, particularly the non-deserving ones, as Accenture's diversity policy often overlooks merit in favor of diversity.
• Many Accenture projects are a haven for sycophants; you can secure your future by sticking your nose up someone's orifice.
• There are some managers/senior managers who are striving to keep the essence (high performance and innovation) of the company together, but most of them are fed up and leaving the company by the hour.

*** MBA Graduates*** please stay away. There are no capability groups as there used to be to ensure MBAs have an enriching work experience. Earlier, the capabilities used to ensure that MBAs were getting a chance to use their skills even if a project (needed for your billing) could not provide opportunities. Now, you will be put to the mercy of Engineering managers (most of which themselves failed to clear any MBA exams), and they would expect you to compete with developers and testers to get a good rating. This means they will expect you to perform on the metrics meant for the technical team, and they will have no shame in saying or implementing that.

To get a promotion, you have to make a case every year. It's not like you can learn to do some things in one year and some in the next to reach that level; it doesn't matter to managers here. You have to do all the things all the time to be deserving of promotion.

The regional influence is nauseating. People talking in local languages even during work calls is commonplace. This limits learning and is unfair to those who do not speak the vernacular.

The farce that is Performance Management: The company declared they changed, they rather blew a trumpet, but their managers still follow the age-old rotten method of curve-fitting. The percentage of people to be put in PIP is already decided at the start of that year's cycle. All this tracking of defining priorities, providing self-inputs, and feedback is just lip service and something that's tracked at the leadership level as a job to be done. Nobody gives a flying fish as to what impact it creates on the employee or if it brings any value to the company. Everybody is in cahoots on this; even the senior leadership is aware of the mockery that's being made of performance achievement.

This is a company living in the last decade. There is no concern about employee satisfaction, let alone happiness; everything is a number to them.

• Look for a job in a better organization; it's going to be worse.

• Utilize HR for a better hiring strategy. It's not just about the HR round but grooming a prospective candidate during the hiring process. I have seen 9 out of 10 people rejecting Accenture offers in the past 3 months. Learn from the hiring processes of companies like Thoughtworks and Google.

• Think about implementing 360-degree feedback. Good numbers do not ensure that all is well in a project. I have seen most employees leaving Accenture because of the incompetent managers you have. The worst Accenture employees are at the level of AM and M, and most of your best performers are at the level of Senior Analyst.

• Improve company policies in terms of remuneration. Implement industry correction processes, improve employee engagements (Rangoli competitions and Fun Fridays are a pathetic waste of HR).