Avanade Reviews in Houston, TX Area

Pros

Our myopic focus on Microsoft means we aren't everything to everyone. We get the job done on time and within budget but the client must commit up front to a level of review greater than our competitors.

Cons

Not sure we have cons that are significantly different with our competitors.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep pushing for ongoing improvements!

Pros

Great training resources
Good exposure to new technologies.
Benefits: Insurance & 401K matching

Cons

Career Management is muddled.
Benefits and expenses coverage have been steadly decreasing.

Advice to Senior Management

Make career management make sense.

Pros

Changing projects and different opportunities

Cons

Non Competitive salary for certain people

Advice to Senior Management

Retaining good people needs to be key

Pros

Great place for learning the latest Microsoft technologies

Cons

Advancement opportunities. You have to be on high visibility projects to get noticed.

Advice to Senior Management

Please keep employees posted on how Avanade as a company is doing on a regular basis.

Pros

Consulting is ultimately the best place to kick start one's career. You will learn a lot and learn to adapt to many facets of business aside from technology.

Cons

Pay is not competitive enough. All consultancies preach work/life balance, but ultimately, the concern of the company rely more so on chargeability rather than your personal life. Most projects I have worked on have been travel Sun-Fri for 50% of the time.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus more on the core of Avanade - their employees, and not so much on the company. I know times are tough, but if you fix things organically, everything will fall into place.

Pros

- great training
- name recognition
- emphasis on the employee
- great experiences
- awesome clients
- become VERY marketable

Cons

- hectic
- can be difficult to balance work/life
- new leveling structure is harder to move up/get raises faster

Advice to Senior Management

Use the old leveling system! The current system we have is identical to Accenture's, while it is a good system, it doesn't allow for constant growth, and promotes underachievement between promotion years!

Pros

What else but Microsoft technlogies and important projects with understanding for developers and challenges they face. Collaboration and assistance from others is always available by people in your circle with high expertise or varied experience. Director of Houston local services office is approachable and available and intersted in keeping group informed and in-touch with dispersed minions.

Cons

Houston office is building but some people aren't as technically up to snuff as I think they should be -- a little naieve and inexperienced IMHO. Giving full credence to the place as being a body shop for staff augmentation. Accenture people are kinda clones if you've heard the word and take lead and glory. Study them to find out what you need to do to be a lockstep winner too. Hahaha.

On Skills, If it weren't for the more experienced members stepping in and asking WHAT are you doing? We be back to GOSUBs , Hardcoding and customize-this-for-JUST ME PLEASE all over the place. Act like a technology professional. It's Avanade! You know creme-de-la-cream.

Don't know if it's experience, lack of passion or what but generally technically some aren't technically hard or multi-faceted and if you arent' passionate about technology and don't know what you are doing don't try selling ideas and trying to appear to be the grand-pooh-bah of all that is influential and technically sound -- that is unless your dealing with a neophyte, mouth agape who'd swallow that crap.

Agree that some leads are myopic or not that well versed on current technology or the crucuality of all skills on their team. This is'nt them all per-se, some are very strong, but when you are in Avanade you expect people to well rounded and at least savvy enough to understand the geist of what every team skillset is for \ does \ and talks about in their status reports also seems the TeamLeads can have a penchant to show favortisim to those that share the same skillset as them. I guess this is human-nature, but whoa, really? Where's the I in team? Share the recognition liberally.

Since it's a consultancy, All prior mentions by others here I'd agree with on hours and WorkLifeBalance. Got to push back. . MSDN, yep. Nice. Certification Nicer. Meetings after a grueling day at the client...not so nice. Books on line and laptops also nice. But try managing Avanade requirements and client requirements and you'll find you'd be pressed to say no to sometimes and scramble to keep up.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep building Houston, Agree with Microsoft Focus, but may need to see other options in the pipleline to truly fly and take advantage of other oppty's

Promote your real technologists and subject matter experts. Understand need to have business skills, they should see the complete picture -- there are some that have this too, but in-reality, productivy increases come from those who can see, interact and define the path to getting there.

Pros

If you like Microsoft technologies, this is the place to be.

Cons

Pigeon-hole consultants into narrow focus. Extremely metrics driven. So if you have an opportunity to do a project where you can learn and grow, they keep you on a staff augmentation project based on metrics. Senior consulting staff are no longer current but are given lead roles and kill morale with their almost constant mistakes. Excessive travel and no real concern about home life whatsoever.

Advice to Senior Management

Put down the Kool-Aid. Microsoft is no longer "it" and we are not doing the equivalent of religious work here.

Pros

Great Benefits + Perks, if you are technology driven and like working with the latest Microsoft technologies, this is the place for you.

Cons

Many of the large projects are staffing projects for Accenture

Advice to Senior Management

keep up with good work, open more lines of communications to all the levels in the organization

Pros

I am surrounded by very intelligent and talented coworkers. People are hired to do very specialized tasks and they are normally the best of the best.

Cons

This is a very political organization. One way to get ahead is to rub shoulders with the right people and many times, these employees get promotions. Some employees do not care about teamwork and just focus on their tasks.

Personal performance is a key factor in one's promotion. This sometimes causes some employees to manipulate the situation by keeping key information from his/her team members to purposely make themselves look good. These said employees will backstab other coworkers and position themselves into their ideal position within the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Team member and team lead feedback should be a mandatory part of an employees yearly review. I can't keep count of the number of times a coworker and/or lead has dropped the ball. If my team doesn't care about me or the project, why should I?