Accenture Reviews in Reston, VA

Pros

Skills and experiences gained surpass what you will get elsewhere. Work is challenging but rewarding. Quality/personalities of employees is excellent.

Cons

Employees must learn how to navigate the performance evaluation process. You cannot rely solely on management for your promotion.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve the feedback cycle to allow for more 360 degree feedback for managers and lower level supervisors.

Pros

Variety of projects available in the firm

Cons

if you are in DC, forget about not working on a federal client, they stick you there and wont let you go. Even if there is a need somewhere else and you find a project, they will keep you where they want you.

Advice to Senior Management

Think about your people development more

Pros

Just to gain some experience in one of the big companies, other than that i wouldn't consider working for this company not more than 2 years

Cons

No overtime, always short deadlines, poor planning, many projects does not support work/life balance, unfair in promotion process, unfair system in providing end of the year feedback

Advice to Senior Management

You guys never care about who are working for 5-10 yrs, they just like to have fresh college grads..bcas they can pay low...and the SEs and Managers they get to stick to their positions for 10-15 yrs.....they have to move on to give opportunities for others

Pros

- Quality of people
- Interesting work
- Training model

Cons

- TRAVEL. Typically if you are in the consulting arm 100% travel is required. Initially its a new experience (especially for those straight out of college); however, you burn out quick.
- Long work hours to meet sometimes unrealistic timelines.
 - Work/life balance is non-existent. View points on this vary across the firm but for me, it did not exist

Pros

In the consulting industry, Accenture provides excellent opportunities for growth through a strong coaching and mentoring program combined with access to the most innovative and large projects. Team orientation and focus on skill building differentiate Accenture from competitors like Deloitte and IBM.

Cons

Cons are primarily cons related to consulting in general: lots of travel means little time at home and less time with family and friends; client demands and the need to constantly build skills mean high stress; the need to both sell new work and deliver for current clients mean weeks are typically 50-70 hours.

Pros

Health Insurance
PTO
Great culture for new joiners that are coming in immediately out of college
Great networking opportunities for college recruits to expand their potential

Cons

Accenture is a great career “starter” for new joiners freshly out of college but for those hired who have worked in other companies for several years prior to on boarding at Accenture – you can expect to have a very rough stay here.

With over 200k+ employee population, Accenture is the size of a medium city and operated very similar when it comes to politics. I was employed here for approximately 2 years before resigning with a bitter taste in my mouth. Experienced hires like me are generally brought on when a large amount of work is acquired and there are not enough of their “golden children” college recruits to fill the open gaps. Hence, you can expect to be looked at as a 2nd class citizen throughout most of your time here and don’t think for a minute that you will ever “ladder” above one of these college joiners or have any chance of breaking into their culture. Tons of politics come into play when it is time for laddering and staffing of projects. Most projects I was assigned to are nothing more than staff augmentation so that I had twice the amount of bosses than if I worked for the client directly. Also, expect to be “force-fitted” onto a project just to get you off the bench and then sink or swim. Unfortunately, most people in these positions end up sinking.

Compensation is mediocre and annual bonus is full of shenanigans. The travel is weekly and gets old very quickly. Per diems are subpar and the travel policy in general is over a mile long pointing out all the things you can’t do or expense that most employers would not question. Don’t worry if you can’t find the time to read it as they will bombard you with email policy reminders on a daily basis.
Training is conducted outside of Chicago, IL and facilitated by internal management looking to “check the box” in order to be considered for their next promotion (i.e. reading off of power point slides all day with not much enthusiasm).

Overall, if you are currently unemployed, go for it so you can get a paycheck but I don’t recommend anyone stay here longer than they have to as an experienced hire.

Advice to Senior Management

Eliminate the laddering and force-fitting processes from your political games!

Pros

ability to work from home

Cons

they talk about work life balance, but when you try to work less than 40 hours a week it's looked upon negatively. Also new hires should be aware of the limited spaces for annual promotion. Most excellent performers with less than 1 year can just forget about getting promoted.

Advice to Senior Management

need to address promotion issues

Pros

- Continuous business training (St. Charles)
- You get about 1 week of training per year at St. Charles (more / less)
- We are amazing at project management...seriously laugh all you want...we are really good at it
- The promotion process is less ambiguous than other consulting firms
- The size and complexity of projects lets you learn a lot about how to communicate your ideas
- The company is very social which makes me feel young
- The ability to work on multiple projects means that I am able to learn a lot of different things...basically...what I learned on one project can be tested on another project to see if the idea is a legitimate idea
- The top quality names means that you will sometimes work with amazing people
- The people in my C3 school (senior consultant at other firms) all had found the time to work on international projects....hence working international is really possible if you're interested

Cons

- We are getting very large, hence some of the annual gatherings that we used to do (which were amazing for building cross city support) no longer occur
- Getting vendor training is difficult as the building the business case is more difficult
- We used to hire well rounded individuals - which means that they could work on several different types of projects. Now we hire specialized people - which means that they can only be used in one area - unfortunately leadership does not understand that you cannot take a (i.e.) Java person and make them into a Tester and expect them to be happy...basically we are having problems balancing our skills requirements
- Since we make more money by putting more people in seats - the standard for getting into Accenture has dropped - that means that a lot of the people that join Accenture now are from 3rd and 4th tier schools
- Accenture's "bread and butter" is project management - we have a special way of doing it that works. Unfortunately our new hires are thrown on projects before they are ready...so instead of having projects managed using the Accenture way to project management you get the Joe-Billy-Bob method to project management
- In this rush to grow - we've lost our pyramid...which means that managers that used to have consultants to help manage large teams now have to do it all by themselves. That means that our managers are stretched thin

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more money - Deloitte and Booz Allen pay more...and yes..I know that a difference is expected...but seriously 20-30% differences means that Accenture's not in the same ball park

Identify your top tier players...I don't meant he people that ladder AT THE VERY TOP or SIG ABOVE...Those guys are great - but go ahead and identify the SMEs in each group...make sure they are rewarded. Because honestly - the more SMEs that we lose - the harder it is for me because I don't have the support structure required to get my tech question answered quickly or to have my projects QA'd --> which in the long run means that more of my projects will fail --> which means we'll have to pay more $$$ to fix the problems

Pros

Resume builder - no question about it...Nothing like the glory days when it was still called Anderson...But still good enough to get you hired when you decide to work somewhere else...and you will decide to work somewhere else after a few years!

Cons

If you're working under a person who is up for promotion, WATCH OUT! They tend to turn into micro micro managers! Promotions, like anywhere, are based on popularity!

Pros

Accenture had a variety of clients across industries as well as secialty functional groups. There was plenty of option for internal mobility.

Cons

Some role required an 18-month committment and were more like 9-5pm jobs at a client site rather than 'traditional" consulting. Be sure to know what you are being hired for in case variety is important to you.