Hey, I'm Jenny Rae La Roux the Managing Director of Management Consulted. And I
found myself in a pretty continual multi-day downward spiral into one-star
reviews of consulting firms on Glassdoor. Now, part of this is entertaining
because I realize that a lot of these come from a very first world, entitled,
perspective. And it's just fun to laugh at them. Some of them were kind of real,
and they get, you know, a little cringe worthy as I'm reading them. But
no matter what, I cannot avert my eyes when it comes to reading these one-star
reviews. So you can do it if just go to Glassdoor, and filter by one-star reviews.
You'll see that almost all the reviews are five-stars, glowing, "we love the CEO".
But these, this is where the real dirt is. So today I'm doing Deloitte
and I got some good stuff for you. One thing that I noticed when I was going
through the Deloitte reviews, I don't think this is a sample issue. But as I
was going through them, they are long! People have a lot of thoughts about the
issues. And I don't know if that has something to do with culture, or just
like the passion, but anyhow, this is the first one: "Billable hours is all that
matters." First of all, concerning title just from
a grammatical perspective. But then the pros are: "Benefits, benefits, benefits.
Health care is great, vacation time (IF you can take it), fitness subsidy, happy
hours, etc." Whenever I read these pros, like, what are you gonna complain about?
I mean, what type of firm that has all of those things can be that terrible?
But then the cons: "You're just an employee to them. At the end of the
day most partners and managers only care about billable hours." Do you guys know how many
employees Deloitte has? Like, yes, you were probably just a number, you actually are
probably legitimately a number in their system. "They ignore your concerns. I was verbally
harassed by two managers on two different projects and while some of the
other managers cared, the partners ignored the issues." I mean that's not
cool, but what what do you mean by harassment? Were you told that you weren't
doing well? Or you were actually harassed? There's a really fine line
sometimes, so anyhow. That's kind of one thing. Here's another good one:
"Good pay, but the pay hikes are not great at all." Again, I
think that's the definition of a first world problem right there. "They do work
in every industry and service offering- so if you know where you want to be and
want some quick experience this is a good place." Fantastic, and, the reason that
you go into consulting. Some of the cons however: "Minimal upward feedback. No way
to share feedback with leaders, which makes it a very top-down organization."
Guys, a lot of the illusion of upward feedback, is that you get a voice in the
matter. And sometimes it matters just a little bit, but the votes are made by the
top. You gotta recognize that from the beginning. "No regard for employees, bad
work-life balance as projects are always sold cheap." That's interesting. I don't
know if that's really true, but also kind of interesting, and "...an unfortunate
project staffing system. No way to build up an appropriate network as the org is
too large, and you end up doing work that you don't like just to keep your
performance KPI's good." So, I think that's actually pretty real. But again, in
general, maybe not the intensity. This one, I think is really great. "Horrible firm who
makes huge amounts of money without being socially responsible". And I also
like the personification of the horrible firm, who makes huge amounts of money
because it just really adds to the evil nature of Deloitte. "Frankly the client
will pay the big bucks to get Excel lists and meetings and their calendars,
but at the end they will get an average outcome and disillusion." Anyhow this
firm does not care about the people who work for them." By the way, I can't even
read this whole thing because it goes on for more than two pages! But they do say
that this is "A ruthless form of slavery", and they say something like
"Is it the Middle Ages of human capital?" I think that's amazing. I do not think that
it is the Middle Ages of human capital. Deloitte has one of the most liberal
policies on, for example, paternity and maternity leave, and some other really
advanced areas. But "the Middle Ages of human capital"... also, "Put greedy people
without ethics in charge and you get Deloitte." That is really harsh. In
addition, "...Unless you were literally starving and they
are the only ones who can provide you a paycheck, stay away." I just, you have to
read this whole thing, because it's really worth it.
Anyhow, this person has some legit animosity. In addition, this one: "I
worked at Deloitte". The pros, this is so harsh, "The artificial smiles and insincere compliments."
I was dying when I read that. How in any way is that a Pro, it's so rude.
Also the cons are: "A lot of gossip and backstabbing." That kind of, is fitting. And then, "...Partners and directors care about
you, until the moment you leave the place." So again, I'm not sure entirely how that's a
Con if they didn't care about you when you were there, that would also be
another issue, but anyhow. This is really funny. "Paying people through experience
and not with actual money as pretentious." Again, I'm not sure that that's entirely
true I'm pretty sure that they were paid every month. Also. "I felt like the
property of the company working here. We were expected to work 80 plus hours per week
and not complain. No overtime, by the way." Standard P.S. in salaried positions.
"People here also love to micromanage. Leadership is non-existent. No vision at
all nor ability to motivate the workforce."
Anyhow, it goes on and it's pretty intense.
So, I'm enjoying reading this. This one just like, so cautioning right? "Don't sell your
soul". The pros are: "It looks good on a resume, government experience, you may get
lucky and land an easy project." The cons, listen to this, "If you already have
a good job, do not leave it to join Deloitte. Long hours, no work-life balance.
Pay looks good, but with all the extra hours worked, your hourly rate is actually
very low. The culture is cut-throat. All they care about is the money you make them.
Management just wants to utilize you as much as you can. Mostly single, divorced,
or people with no family or friends." That's so sad! "...Lots of competition. You
can't take vacation as it will hurt your "utilization". Kills your family,
social, and personal life. Stress, pressure." The intensity, really, really interesting.
Also, this one, "Senior Consultant". "I worked at Deloitte full time, more than a year.
Pros are the pay and sign on bonus." Again great Pros. Cons: "Elitist attitudes
and borderline racist at all levels." That's intense. Also probably something
that we should talk about in a totally different way. And then this is, I think
the last one but also pretty good, "Hierarchical, top-down, weakness based,
exclusive, and intolerant culture." Harsh. Guess where this comes from? The
human capital practice.That is intense right there!
And then they say here are the pros: "Prestige of working for a big 4 consulting firm"
Great. 2- "I feel like I'm paid fairly but it's
actually quite low compared to what I made before, when you consider how many
hours I work." By the way, that is a calculation that every consultant does
at some point. How much do I make per hour? They always do it in the week before the end
of a project when they're working 80 or 90 hours, and the numbers never look good.
So just FYI, if you want to stay in consulting, never do that calculation, it
won't make you feel good about yourself. If you want to leave, do the calculation,
it'll make you feel entirely justified about going somewhere else. But then she
actually goes on to do the calculation which i think is fantastic and really
helpful. You can see that she's learned a lot in the role. So she
divides her annual salary by the number of hours per year,
hourly number and then takes the number of hours that she was working before by
her previous annual salary. But then, this is where it gets dark. "Nobody seems to
enjoy their work. I once asked the Senior Manager of all the things we've done for
Deloitte what have you enjoyed the most? Her response was, "I don't even think that
way. I just work here for the money." Doesn't that just make you want to cry? She happened to
be talking about to me at 10 o'clock at night, in between client meetings, why work
so many hours at something you don't enjoy?" Like, this person in human
capital wanted to give a lot of hugs. "The people in human capital did not seem to
be excited about their field. Most of them would have preferred to work in
another area but were not skilled enough to get into strategy or tech. I
joined human capital to improve people's lives at work, but the people here are
unhappy. I had a Principal ridiculed me for
asking for a reasonable accommodation for a disability." Okay, not cool. I'm not saying
that all of these are cool or cringe-worthy. I'm just saying there's a
lot of stuff in here. "I've had several managers asking to falsify
my hours. This makes it hard to reach utilization. On the other hand,
if you refuse to lie, it affects your performance rating." Okay
that's intense, and probably something that should not be brought up on Glassdoor, but
more like in an internal issue. "I have to pay out of pocket without reimbursement
for the privilege of working for one of Deloitte's offices." I don't know what
that means. I'm guessing she means commuting expenses? And then,
"Experienced hires are not given access to the best projects because staffing is based more
on personal networks than skills qualifications or interests." That is
weird to me because if experienced hires have the best personal networks, than they
should also get the best projects. Anyhow, lots of good stuff in these one-star reviews.
Overall, I think what it takes to work successfully at a consulting firm
and to leave with honor, is to say thank you so much for making my entire future
career, for giving me really valuable skills, and great relationships. It is possible
that you come to a time, when it's time to leave. And everybody on our team found
that time. But anyhow, just be careful of some of these toxic thoughts, and definitely
if you're having them on a daily basis, don't stay in consulting. Go do something
else afterwards. But but when you're there make sure you really enjoy the
perks. Something that a lot of people, thousands and thousands, actually
millions of readers of our site would like to do every year. So don't forget
that you have the privilege, even if some of the things are kind of intense.
Hope that you enjoyed this video and we'd love to hear more if you have actual experiences at Deloitte about
your great, and also your kind of crazy experiences there. Thanks again for watching.