Accenture

First of all, I started at the Philippines Delivery Center, then spent a couple years assigned in the US (but under work sponsorship), so there are two aspects of this review.

Philippines Delivery Center

• Great location, at least for the main office
• Average medical benefits (not that bad for my needs)
• Opportunity to grow within your capability/technical group
• Pleasant working environment, very light-hearted and casual atmosphere
• Depending on project, there is a chance you get assigned out of the country
• Great training even for non-technical recruits
• Great wellness programs
• Great employee loan and profit-sharing programs
• Pay doesn't suck, but it's not that great either
• Work-life balance is OK (see Cons for the "buts")
• Casual work environment
• Good overtime pay (although I think they now try to sneak that as "night shift" hours because it's cheaper)

US Delivery Center

• Overall nice people
• Flexible work time
• Casual work environment (I am not a business suit person)
• Very supportive management
• You don't feel like a drone in the fast-paced working environment
• When you make a blunder, the business team and management know you're only human, and they actually encourage you and offer to help if you need it. It was touching to know that your colleagues really cared.

Philippines Delivery Center

• Sometimes your work-life balance will be thrown out-of-whack, depending on the project deadline. I had a 6-month stint where I had to work minimum 11 hours, 7 days a week, including holidays. I can tell you it was a pretty lonely Christmas season for the team.

• Once you're beyond the junior or mid-level, it gets hard to re-tool if you want to expand your skill set, and you're pretty much stuck in your team/capability forever. Approaching management is of no help at all.

• If you are the type of person who likes working quietly in the background but do your job well (I call it working independently without much supervision) and you are not within a 5-feet radius from where the manager is sitting, you stand a likely chance that you are not going to get promoted because you were not "noticed."

• If you end up with a not-so-good manager, and you made a first-time blunder, they get extremely paranoid and sometimes demean you (e.g., demoralize you over the phone, with other people working, in speaker mode).

• It is not like the US, where employment is generally "at-will" and all you need is to submit a two-weeks notice if you want to leave. Here, you may have to pay "bonds" if you want to leave the company, and the mandatory contract that you signed (e.g., after a paid training or an onshore assignment) hasn't expired yet. This wasn't the bad part; I understand the company wants to keep you as a valuable asset for a certain time period, but they certainly don't ask nicely when you decide to leave prematurely. They send you a notice that pretty much makes you feel like they're just after the money and are not sad to see you go. You have to submit a 4-week notice.

US Delivery Center

• They don't offer much technical training for experienced individuals who want to learn a different skill. If you are overqualified, you're out of the running, even if the training you request is for a very different technical scope than what you are experienced on.

• Needs more work on resource management. Sometimes a task can't be handled by only one person on-site during normal business hours, and there are five times the resources available off-shore during non-business hours who can actually share the hectic load during on-site hours.

• Too many project processes going on, but they're not that efficient at assigning WBS elements, and sometimes you get stuck in between two tasks and get confused where to charge your time, as the concept of which WBS to charge to is not thoroughly explained to you. They definitely need work on managing project accounts.

Be more practical with cost-cutting measures, especially for resource management. Make sure you value your employees.

Be more open to training experienced individuals who want to actually learn something entirely new instead of branding them "overqualified." Some people are actually in it for the learning experience more than the pay.

Go back to seeing the employee's potential and how much the employee can contribute long-term, rather than the employee's present monetary worth now. You always emphasize "think long-term" – own it.

It's disappointing because I actually liked the culture and diversity of the company.