Accenture Reviews in Washington, DC

Former Employee – worked at Accenture full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – - The people here are great. Most of you collegues are recent graduates or young professionals which means lots of humor in the office and lots of happy hours.
- Two yearly Accenture Happy Hours geared to getting you drunk

Cons – - Long hours. Be prepared to work long hours on the whim of your manager/senior managers. They are worried about delivering their promises to the client regardless of your plans.
- Work/Life Balance. Pretty bad. You will find yourself working almost non-stop during rush times and even when things are slow getting out of there with 40 hours are rare.
- Promotion Opportunity. More and more people are missing their promotion cycles due to management making stringent rules for promotion. Promotions do not go to those who deserve them most of the time and usually end up going to those managers like; regardless of your ability to deliver.
- Turnover. In my 4 years at working with Accenture, 67% of the Company was hired after me. In a 350,000 person company, that is a huge number of people. Turnover is high because there is high burnout potential. Most employees do not stick around past their consultant year.

Advice to Senior Management – Practice what you preach. If you are a company that rewards on merit; follow your rules. The arbitrary promotion cycle needs to be fixed.
Learn to say no. In consulting it is rare to hear a manager say no, but make sure you can actually deliver what you promise. Overextending your workforce will lead to a higher turnover rate.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Accenture full-time for more than a year

Pros – big company to work for. Good vacation

Cons – Very bad management. Hopeless. Avoid

Former Employee – worked at Accenture full-time for more than a year

Pros – benefits, paid holidays, and flexible work from home schedule

Cons – Never saw senior management
Never saw or had a career counselor
Not very helpful in search for new opportunities within the company
No room for growth within current team
DOES LAY OFFS ALL THE TIME!!!

Advice to Senior Management – Don't staff people on a team where there is barely work coming in; no work leads to lay offs.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Accenture full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Good company for college hires. Good place to start your career and get the name on resume. Good benefits and perks. Good culture on paper.

Cons – No work life balance. Top performers are worked into the ground. You do have an opportunity to move up but will have to slog very hard. If you have social life outside of work it will suffer.

Advice to Senior Management – Upper Management need to look out for their people. Tend to agree to take on work and deliver on time regardless of how long people have to work.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Accenture full-time for more than a year

Pros – Exposure to different industries. Good training opportinities

Cons – Performance review system installed by the company is really horrible. It is totally subjective and biased. Working with a manager who is either frustrated or up for promotion can be a disaster. At the end of the day he/she can say anything about individual contributors and there is no system installed to cross check and validate any assertion by such individuals. I believe many will share my observations across the board. Good contributors and performers go without unnoticed and without getting rewarded while those who are good at pretending and talking loud with zero knowledge of specific task at hand often get rewarded and promoted. I have personally seen peoples assigned to a project with zero knowledge of what needs to be accomplished. All it takes is for that person to be a good pretender and get favored. If it continues like this, the issue will have compounding effect on Accenture and its clients.

Advice to Senior Management – Most higher managers climbed the ladder by enforcing and implementing a horrible system installed by the company; as such providing input to here is worthless.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Accenture full-time for less than a year

Pros – Compensation
Ability to somewhat work alone
Relocation stipend
Ability to work in a big city
Kinda hard to really add anything else to the pro list (honestly)

Cons – Lack of communication
Very cold working environment; not many people are friendly
Everyone pings (instant messages in order to communicate)
Many employees are not willing to help the new person; they are more concerned about their promotions and their own goals
No sense of belonginess
Intern human resource specialist (TFS) do not pair you with roles that are in line with you capabilities

Advice to Senior Management – Hire more people that are people developers

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Accenture

Pros – Great knowledge sharing network and able to pick up a lot of skills in any project. Benefits are great.

Cons – - When it comes to promotion, it doesn't make sense to have your counselor to represent you if he/she hasn't been on your project. Therefore a lot of misinterpretation happens resulting your chance for promotion. You can work your butt off, provide great quality work, get praises from management but the only thing you'll get in the end is disappointment.

- Bonus' is pathetic and management expects you to work "harder" next year

- Rolling off projects is almost impossible with stubborn management that always thinks about "me, me, me"

Advice to Senior Management – As a management consulting firm, LISTEN to your own people. Stop being cheap and give better bonuses/salary to employees. And you wonder why ACN slipped on Fortune's list year after year.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Accenture

Pros – 1) Great pay and pretty good benefits and compensation.

I think Accenture pays the average Employee well but that is just my guess / opinion. I haven't worked for too many similar companies to compare.

2) Nice coworkers are everywhere.

I worked in two different Projects and my coworkers were nice and decent in both, from what I've heard from other Accenture People this is generally the trend.

Cons – Unfortunately what all the reviews say is sadly true, too much politics. One person wrote that you only report to one person and if that one person doesn't like you then that's the end of the line -- I strongly feel that is the case. Another wrote that some people get promoted by favoritism or by something other than their contributions, again I think from what I saw this is very true. I didn't see Accenture as a Company where you can be an individual. Too much Politics, I was also verbally harassed by my Manager on a daily basis who didn't like me from the get go which later led to my dismissal. If you are willing to work hard, don't mind giving up lots of your time to earn good money and are willing to roll the dice with the Manager you end up with I'd say give it a shot. But there have got to be some other Companies out there that let you be more of an individual. I would recommend this Company to anyone who doesn't mind feeling like a Cog.

Advice to Senior Management – Reign in your bad Managers, and this is very important but so seldom practiced. Say "Good job" once in a while, give people positive reinforcement. In all the times I worked under my Manager I think he said I did a good job on something once. It takes so little to retain good talent, I know it seems small but just little awknowledgements make a huge difference. Don't just highlight the negative.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Accenture

Pros – Big brand name is what you get working for Accenture. They're not good for great compensation. so so management.

Cons – The bonus is bad, the competition is fierce and the people play office politics. This is a big corporate environment.

Advice to Senior Management – Learn to value your smart I.T. talent.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Accenture

Pros – Accenture does a little bit of everything. It is a great resume builder. One role on a project may may yield experience in 5-6 different areas of a system's lifecycle. Pay is in-line with comparable consulting companies.

Cons – Career mobility is mis-represented during the hiring process. Just because the recruiter says that it is easy to move into SCM or CRM, doesn't mean you have a shot at it. It is easier to negotiate salary than organizational alignment coming into the company.

There is very little work life balance. If you are on a difficult project with long hours, and do halfway decent work, it can be difficult to leave. New team members may roll on, but they will likely be rolled off quickly when no one has time to get them up to speed. This is true at all levels. In the year that I was staffed on a single project, there were three SE's. Staffing on projects is driven solely by desired profit. Meeting actual staffing needs and providing a quality work product takes a backseat to making lots of money.

The assessment process is subjective and inconsistent. It was not uncommon for team members to assess others that were in their own peer group (whom they were laddered against). Promotions were based on a weird combination of tenure and social visibility. There are first year analysts that exhibit more competence and integrity than senior managers, but these people are not rewarded.

Clients and client expectations are not managed. There is no effort to adjust schedules to reflect increases in project scope. If the client acts inappropriately, management may be too spineless to let them know that they are out of line.

Advice to Senior Management – Deliver on the career mobility that is promised at hiring. Staff projects according to workload instead of desired profit. Promote based on objective criteria. Have some backbone in dealing with clients. Consider factors other than profit.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend