Deloitte

Best architecture, good staff, responsible rules. The company provides good benefits. Nice experience with Deloitte.

A comprehensive insurance plan covers:

• Medical insurance (includes a corporate discount for dependents)
• Life and disability insurance
• Travel insurance

Work-life balance can become poor, especially during tight project timelines. This is expected in the consulting business.

The employees have a significant amount of "firm-internal" training and knowledge contribution tasks. There are annual goal expectations. It can get tedious if you continuously work on high-demand projects.

There is intense competition, especially during targeted promotion/milestone years. There can be some backstabbing. It's part of the experience. It is not as bad as it sounds, and seems manageable.

A lot of times, being young and inexperienced has its flaws. The company has a simple way of seasoning consultants. They get pushed into high-pressure situations, and they learn fast, and quickly start managing their own work. But they tend to be blind towards intricate details, especially in complicated IT product implementations.

This has an interesting effect. If someone is able to do the hands-on work, everyone else tries to piggyback on that person for their actual work. The hands-on guy gets overwhelmed, and others try to use him/her as a key resource.

I personally went through a crunch project and found a number of people "managing expectations" (piggybacking), while a handful of people actually knew the end-to-end solution and did the hands-on work. This created a lot more work and mental anguish than needed. Because of the expressed pressure, the hands-on guys have a hard time building and growing their reputation and subsequent performance evaluation rating. This also affects the project execution timelines.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you thoroughly read through your employment agreement and understand the implications. In recent years, they have started hiring for specific projects ONLY. This falls under a particular "AMS service line". In this case, if your assigned project gets into a problem, you are exposed to the risk of employment termination.

Their HR and Management are very helpful, and they will try to get you a new project. But there are several constraints like location, your skills, and limited time. I went through this, and it was somewhat unnerving. This was one of the reasons I ended up leaving the company.

Advice to Management

I have high regards for the Senior Management in this company. I think they are the market leaders in the industry, especially with their consistent high standards.

Personally, I think they should strongly encourage some "end-to-end" hands-on responsibility in the IT consulting division. There are very few hands-on guys. I have seen a lot of segregation of duties between people that causes endless heartburn during crunch project timelines.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you thoroughly read through your employment agreement and understand its implications. In recent years, they have started hiring for specific projects ONLY. This falls under a particular "AMS service line". In this case, if your assigned project gets into a problem, you are exposed to the risk of employment termination.

Their HR and management are very helpful, and they will try to get you a new project. But there are several constraints like location, your skills, and limited time. I went through this, and it was somewhat unnerving. This was one of the reasons I ended up leaving the company.