Deloitte

If you happen to be one of the fortunate individuals who land a project that falls within the scope of your skill set and one with management that values work/life balance, then you will most likely be in good shape at Lake Mary's USDC center.

Also, the PTO accrual is not too bad. The campus is in a good location; Lake Mary is very nice.

Great maternity/paternity leave.

I have to give a disclaimer.

My experience here was not a good one at all. I am one of those professionals who has been very aggressive in my career progression. Having worked for both small and Fortune 500 companies, I must say, Deloitte was a colossal disappointment.

INTERVIEW: Flew me down from out-of-state. I prepped for about 7 days for the interview. My position would be Sr. Solution Engineer on the Java service line. I was challenged on the behavioral front; however, the technical questions were pointless. It was basically a resume scan where my technical interviewer was impressed that I had prior teaching experience. We kicked back and talked about a bunch of nothing, and I flew back home after spending the weekend enjoying central Florida. I heard back in a couple of days that I got the job.

FIRST 4 MONTHS: Despite being hired to some project (I think it was a Navy project), something fell through, and I ended up benched.

After working my butt off to get where I am, for the first time in my career in years, I was getting paid to show up and complete a compliance checklist and meet people. This was a miserable experience. In this kind of phase, there is very little guidance in the organization; you are a wandering soul wondering how long someone is going to pay you for this kind of "work".

PROJECT: After I couldn't take it anymore, I reached out to my recruiter and asked her what the deal was with putting a senior engineer on the bench. I told her I was about ready to send out resumes. She made some moves, and suddenly I got pinged by my service line leader (AMS) to come to his office. He was not the most pleasant of individuals and rudely started asking me if I knew all the tech skills on this random requisition document. I was familiar with all of the non-proprietary skills (Java, Eclipse, PL/SQL, Maven/Ant, etc.). I had an internal interview on the phone with about 6 or 7 people and got the job. (Go figure, I thought I ALREADY had a job, right?). He pressured me to commit from one to two years on the project, which already had me throwing up a red flag.....

I got on the project, and I ended up being bored out of my mind. The team was all about SAP. I was a minority due to both my race as well as being a Java professional. So much emphasis was put on learning SAP that I was wondering why they didn't hire an SAP specialist who knew a little bit of Oracle DB and a tad bit of Java. But anyway, as I soon would learn, the role saved me from basically getting canned.

PROJECT CULTURE: Almost my entire team was of Indian descent. Now, I love ALL PEOPLE. But it is ridiculous how saturated with Indian culture the USDC firm is. I was encouraged to participate in Indian religious activity, despite the fact that I am an avid believer in Christ. It was to the point where the assumption was that I would just go with the flow of my team's religious activities and celebrations. I was asked to leave private rooms so that Muslims could pray. Really?!!??

On multiple occasions, I've had to be rude to one particular colleague for trying to get me to assist with some religious holiday activity while I had work to do.

I later found out that before I joined, another guy of my same race quit for the same reasons. Some complaints about the racial component seemed to explain why I was even considered for the position in the first place.

BRICK WALL: I reached out to my so-called "resource manager," who basically confirmed that I had zero options. I told her that Deloitte had become my first professional "Brick Wall," and she assured me that to leave the project would be synonymous with leaving the firm. So, in a nutshell, I was stuck and hence began my interview process outside the firm.

BENEFITS: NO sick time. 1/4 on the dollar 401(k) matching.

NO REGRETS: A month after leaving, they canned around 50 practitioners. This was further confirmation that I made the right move....

Management at Lake Mary USDC needs to revitalize culture, client procurement, and employee relations. The business model leaves the practitioner almost always holding the short end of the stick. Here is precisely what I mean:

A "benched" employee is nothing more than a jobless professional with a salary that is bound to be temporary if he or she cannot find work. I was fortunate enough to land a role that was at best a poor fit.

My advice:

Trust your practitioners or don't hire them. Advocate for their ability to do the work to the clients. Don't let quality employees rot on the bench while awaiting the inevitable doomsday of being let go.

My advice:

Don't let the culture get so out of hand that it becomes an HR nightmare. The only reason I didn't make this issue bigger than I did is because I knew the company wouldn't have been a good fit for me either way, but I cannot believe this kind of work environment exists in America. The Diwali (Indian Holiday) service on the second floor might as well have been a church service with an altar call. I watched many people walk out during the prayer because we simply don't believe in what they believe in. This is utterly reprehensible! Everyone is entitled to their own belief system; however, these beliefs shouldn't be forced upon anyone in their working environment.