Accenture

• Wide variety of technology to work with, and clients across many industries. Good place to build experience and network.
• Traveling opportunities (Note: solutions employees are not required to travel, unlike consultants).
• Work-life balance can be very good or very bad, depending on the project.
• Solutions are not required to come to the office while on the “bench”.
• People are generally fun, helpful, and easy to work with.
• From what I’ve seen, Accenture is generally supportive of leaving the firm to work for the client. =D

• Below average salaries and PTO for solutions employees.
• Inequality between workforces in terms of salaries and benefits.
  • Entry-level solutions employees (Associate Software Engineer) start at $40k (non-negotiable).
  • Consulting analysts start at a very minimum of $50k.
  • Solutions start with 11 days PTO vs. Consulting with 25.
• Easy to get pigeonholed into a specific type of work. This is a problem across all workforces, generally true for many people who take testing as their first role.
• Work-life balance isn’t consistent across all projects. I’ve been on projects where we work roughly 12+ hours a day, and others where we only work 8.
• The promotion process is strongly dependent on your ability to sell yourself and on getting managers/executives in your network to support your promotion (more so when you start moving up the corporate ladder). The process is a far cry from the meritocracy they claim it to be.
• Raises/promotions are strongly affected by the economic climate. If you get promoted during a year when the economy is bad, you can get very little or no raise that year. (Accenture will not adjust your salary to match your peers at your level when the economy recovers).

Close the inequality gap between workforces by making salaries and benefits better.

Many solutions exist for employees filling the same roles as consultants. There's no reason to keep the gap as large as it is.

Revise the promotion and compensation process; it's a broken system.