Bain & Company Reviews

Pros

Great people, lots of professional development, a fantastic stepping stone to a wide variety of other opportunities. You'll come away with a broad set of business-related experiences and will have had a good time doing it

Cons

Culture has a tinge of expected overcommitment; working hours vary widely and it is difficult to plan a life around them

Pros

Client engagements are overall very interesting and focused on the most important issues
Culture is top rate
People care about your development

Cons

Travel can be draining. Seems to be increasing
Can't ever be 100% sure that your personal plans will stick
Premium product offered to clients means there's never room to relax

Advice to Senior Management

Keep being selective about client engagements. Growth at the expense of good people isn't worth it. Thanks for the support!

Pros

The people and my direct team are great to work with. Overall, it's a fun company to work for. The company perks and benefits are great (e.g., free coffee, cereal and fruit, monthly socials and gatherings to keep employees happy).

Cons

Unfairness in promotion. Bain often creates job titles/positions that aren't applicable in the outside work world. There is a huge disconnect between the administrative and consulting staff in terms of treatment and pay. Senior management tend to promote within if the candidate comes from a 'consulting' background, despite the person's hands on experience and knowledge in the industry. Senior management often values a consultant's perspective/insight more so than that of an admin employee with extensive knowledge and background in the industry.

Advice to Senior Management

Value your hard working employees and their expertise. Consultants aren't the only ones with expertise to offer to Bain. Bain should be able to do things more in-house versus having projects outsourced (to India or companies with certain expertise).

Pros

The company has a moto of "Work Hard Play Hard" and they stand behind it. There are high expectations of employee performance and the rewards for hard work are regular. The company fosters an environment where employees from all departments and level socialize and share their views related to the business. Bain also has a commitment to improving a range of business and career skills for all employees. Employees are provided with all of the tools they need to perform their job, there are almost no questions asked about requests, this fosters a feeling of trust and respect between the employee and the company.

Cons

The only con that comes to mind is the lower salary for my position in the industry. The work load and complexity of the work load is much greater then others in the same position yet out pay is lower. Then again Bain seems to attempt to offset the lower pay with more paid socializing events.

Advice to Senior Management

Set a goal to encourage and foster mentorship for the young employees within the company. Giving the young employees a chance to learn from the older and experienced employees will open opportunities for the younger employees.

Pros

Collaborate and fun culture, great and smart people, a wide range of future opportunities within/out of the firm, strong and rigorous training program

Cons

Bad work and life balance (maybe only in Korea). Even though it got much better compared to past, still have to work until like 12~1AM during weekdays.

Pros

1. You will have fun at work
2. You will get good quality of work
3. You will get feedback about your performance regularly

Cons

1. Sometime it happens you have to work late to complete the assigned case work
2. I dont see any other cons working here

Advice to Senior Management

Management is doing really good by doing great analysis on variety of cases and helping clients to achieve target growth in limited time

Pros

Love working here; you'd be hard pressed to find a better consulting firm to work at. Great career progression, learning, networking, etc.

Cons

Hard to stand out against so many other really smart, driven people.

Pros

Learning experiences make for a great work environment.

Cons

Travel can vary depending on the project.

Pros

I absolutely love working here. First off, the people are very accomplished but incredibly normal about it -- no egos. Also the culture is extremely collaborative -- just as advertised.

The work is also really interesting -- at the end of the day we're also helping big name companies fix some of their most important issues. For me, I absolutely love having the potential for that kind of impact.

Cons

The lifestyle obviously (living out of a suitcase wears on many people), but even in terms of this Bain tries to help us proactively carve out personal time. The other con for some people is that Bain's a very direct firm with constant feedback -- many find it pretty confronting.

On this point, every two weeks we get a check in with our managers and hear everything we need to improve on. For instance even though I'm doing pretty well here, out of the 45 minutes, I usually hear just one positive mixed in with a whole lot of constructive points of criticism. If you won't thrive in that sort of environment, my advice is to do more research and seriously consider whether or not to apply -- consulting is an extremely demanding job that would become terrible if you're not comfortable in the firm you choose.

Advice to Senior Management

I'm not sure that Bain is as maniacal / driven / results focused as it used to be, especially at the lower levels. This makes sense because it may be completely different reasons for accepting a Bain job (eg prestige) than it once was (culture fit over prestige). If we are actually losing this part of our identity, It might be worth addressing at the various global trainings.

Pros

the firm has a really strong culture, people are extremely grounded and fun to be with, management is generally very understanding

Cons

there is not a lot of client exposure at the junior levels, do a lot of private equity work which can be a good or a bad thing