Accenture

Lots of different clients. If you don't like a project or a client, there is always an option to move to a different project.

You'll quickly bond with other colleagues due to a "we're in this together" culture.

Gives you a lot of exposure (and exposure therapy). You'll have to learn to stand up for yourself and to say "no" the hard way.

You get the chance to directly work with clients and learn what terms like "damage control", "full-stack" or "multidisciplinary" mean.

Public transport business card, which is quite nice given that the salary is so low.

The workload really depends on what the project manager or the sales manager has promised the client. More often than not, they try to sell you on a role that doesn't entirely fit your resume, just as long as you're on any client for as long as possible. It happened quite often that I was sold on a project in which I had zero experience, and I just had to "deal with it somehow".

Speaking about sales, I have had many different projects, around 15 in total. At 3 of them, I was actually doing something I enjoyed and something that I was good at. When I finished one of those 3 projects, I went above and beyond to make the client interested in follow-up work. The sales and project manager screwed up the entire client relation that the developers had been working on for 3 months, and everyone was kicked out. I later spoke to one of the client employees, and she was super upset that she couldn't work with us anymore due to the way sales tried to screw them over.

I would always get a couple of projects to choose from or to pursue. When that wasn't the case anymore early in the COVID pandemic, everything was suddenly my fault, and it was my sole responsibility to get a project. The pressure was so bad that I nearly got a burnout.

A lot of managed top-down. If they want, they can take away any sort of independence you had and just work on crappy projects nobody wants to do.

You might be in a team, but as a consultant, you're almost never involved in a project as a team. You're rarely staffed on a project together with your team lead. Everyone is doing their own thing, and unless you're someone who can maintain friendships with colleagues, you'll have a hard time bonding with people. Before COVID, it was quite normal to have never met someone who had been with the company for more than 2 years.

In general, projects are either with very non-technical clients or with VERY technical clients. You're either questioning yourself why you're putting in so much effort if nobody will understand why or what it's for, or you'll struggle with imposter syndrome.

Listen to your employees. Figure out what skills they like to pursue and work on your sales department. If there is such a global shortage of skilled labor, it's almost impossible to say that there is no work for your employees. They have little to no idea what they are trying to sell, and it only results in disappointed clients and stressed-out employees.