Accenture

Excellent benefit, free laptops and live-well assistance. Depending on the project you're on, sometimes you get free food. There is always a social or charity event to join. There are some excellent training programs to take advantage of.

I have worked in the Federal division for a while on the east coast, and I find my experience with Accenture very bad, maybe because I have been on some pretty bad projects. Even though Accenture credits itself for best work/life balance, it's a complete lie in my opinion.

The managers don't directly verbally disagree if you need to take PTO, but you'll hear them complain about it. It's super annoying.

Sometimes you have to firmly say you need PTO or you prefer weekends off, otherwise they'll put so much work on your plate you won't ever have time to breathe. And sometimes upper management complains if there is no scheduled weekend work.

The performance system is awful. They compare you against everyone who is at your career level for that contract division, and then if you are successful at "winning" for your level at that division, they compare you with everyone for the Federal division who are at your level. It feels like America's Next Top Model.

There are managers that try to find the slightest issue that they can find to put on your performance review, from entering wrong charge codes to not asking enough questions.

I notice that there are a lot of arrogant Software Developers. They often make you feel dumb and compare your intellect with other people just so they can feel better about themselves. Some are very rude, some will talk about you behind your back to other developers, some won't help you even when you ask them for help.

I've met managers that just don't care about anyone but only care about what the client wants and rush in "last minute" requirements/design so that they can make the client happy, even though it affects the development process. This can cause the developer to work very late, forcing you to develop something really ugly while trying to reach the deadline. This can cause the entire application to break because of the lack of details in the rush requirement, which causes management to rethink about the requirement because it doesn't "fit" at all in the application, which causes great confusion and a lot of waste of time and money.

I notice that there are a lot of vague requirements and designs. And there were times that certain pages of a web application were not tested by the test team.

But then again, some of this is very common at other tech/consulting companies.

Implement a "no coding after 11 PM" policy. Too many developers have broken code because no developers want to stay after 12 AM to fix it.

Tell middle and upper management to properly detail their requirements and designs. Too much vagueness causes too much confusion.

Stop comparing people with other people during performance review periods. I know it's to encourage competitiveness, but sometimes managers have a way of classifying people as inferior.