Accenture Reviews in Denver, CO Area

Pros

Lots of learning opportunities, albeit for nothing that you're interested in

Cons

Cavalier management, poor pay, and lousy benefits

Advice to Senior Management

Align people with their stated interests given during interviews. Too much attrition is due to poor alignment of skillsets with internal opportunities.

Pros

People, knowledge, opportunities, working for clients

Cons

Work/Life balance, compensation, internal red tape

Advice to Senior Management

Make it more about the people

Pros

Great for your resume and the chance to work for many Fortune 500 companies. They do honor work/life balance like working from home from time to time. This place is for younger folks that need experience out of University.

Cons

The tasks at hand are very time consuming and you are expected to perform miracles on a daily basis. Expect to work many hours and not get credited for all the time you put in. The time management systems are horrible and require constant micro-managing of your hourly activities.

Advice to Senior Management

For Accenture Learning- Get rid of the factory model of working and time management systems.

Pros

Opportunities to work from home for 3 out of 5 days.

Cons

For the amount of work expected, it was a complete rip-off. Contract employees especially get the shaft, which is fairly typical in a corporate environment. However, the contractors I knew were making about 15K less at Accenture than they would at similar companies doing similar things. That was also without benefits. Full-time/regular employees can only go so far before they hit a ceiling on their salary. It doesn't matter how competent you are. If you get the misfortune of being on a certain team and having a certain manager, you were pretty much screwed. I was often also overwhelmed by useless conference calls and meetings with managers that were designed solely to provide the appearance of an open door. Meanwhile, managers repeatedly shifted the buck and avoided solving real issues that desperately affected our clients. My co-workers were competent and did a lot of work. However, the management encouraged a lot of secrecy and backbiting behavior that ultimately led to internal issues within my team and two people leaving the company altogether.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management appears to really try to do the right thing. However, the middle managers are largely incompetent or just outright liars. They either aren't empowered to do anything or don't feel the need to do the right thing. I've had managers lie about vital issues and pit employee against employee. It's really despicable, unethical behavior.

Pros

Accenture is a great place to learn. You work with other really bright people who usually are highly motivated and have wonderful world experiences that they bring with them. When working for Accenture, the mentality is "work-hard, play-hard" and I think that has reigned entirely true in my nearly four years of experience with the company. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Another good reason to work for Accenture is that they are a reputable organization. The company is growing and posting solid numbers in a difficult economy which is unusual given the fact that consulting companies tend to do poorly in tougher economic times. I give credit to an excellent senior management team which filters through the ranks throughout Accenture.

Cons

Without a doubt the single toughest part of working with Accenture is the work-life balance. I know this is a struggle whenever you work for a large company, but it seems extremely true in this case. I typically work 60 hours a week and have little time for much other than work. Another difficult part of the work is the travel aspect. Being away from loved ones for 4 days a week can take a toll on a relationship. I would highly recommend Accenture as a place to work straight out of college with no attachments, but once it comes time to settle down, it becomes a difficult proposition.

Advice to Senior Management

Work on the annual performance feedback process. The fact that it is based upon merit is really not true. It is based more upon who knows who and less about performance.

Pros

Great name to add to your resume. Filled with young go-getters and very knowledgeable people. Projects area always something of vital importance, lots of opportunity to learn

Cons

Cutthroat office politics favor brown-nosers and cute blondes over hard workers and great ideas. "Up or out" career path creates more management than actual workers, which creates a terrible work life balance at the lower ranks. Pay far below average for entry level people, which creates huge turnover and morale issues among the workers. Management rarely comprehends complex technical problems which they are contracted to remedy, which often results in impossible project timelines

Advice to Senior Management

Ditch the "up or out" philosophy, and make sure you hire technical people based on more than how legs look in a mini skirt

Pros

The people at Accenture can't be beat. Accenture has a very good reputation.

Cons

Since my role is in consulting, travel is extensive.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep communicating, keep offering people opportunities to advance