Deloitte Reviews in Detroit, MI Area

Pros

flexibility, and alternative work arrangement options

Cons

work hours and long weekend hours when on projects

Advice to Senior Management

listen to lower management

Pros

Smart people
Good client list
Some positive career opportunities (depending on situation and luck)
Good name recognition in the marketplace

Cons

Highly political
Pyramid scheme designed to reward top 7-10%
Lack of ethical conscience in dealings with employees
Old school operations model and rewards
Lack of collaboration; extremely independent performance-oriented environment
Lack of diversity in top leadership ranks

Advice to Senior Management

Commit to authentic and honest communication and actions
Don't say you're ethical, be ethical
Show respect for employees
Recognize that there's an opportunity cost associated with coddling a top few in your company

Pros

Salary, great people, great benefits.

Cons

Too much heirarchy. Too many people feel entitled and have an attitude toward staff at levels below them.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat everyone as if you would treat your own family. With respect and dignity.

Pros

Deloitte is the top rated professional services firm in the world, both in revenues and customer rankings. Working for them will get your resume looked at.

Cons

If you have a family, and like seeing them, Deloitte is not the place for you. They will promise you the world and fail to deliver. I have five years experience and a master's degree and was put on a project basically to make copies 60 hours a week. I asked to be put on another project and was denied....so I left.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't waste the sills of your employees. Challenge them. Give them experiences to grow. You hire top talent, so don't be surprised if they leave after a short time for another position if you don't offer growth opportunities.

Pros

Good .. reputed firm. Work life balance.

Cons

More emphasis on Community events
Annual review based on firm activity involvement

Advice to Senior Management

Weight employee on what they bring to the firm (client hours)

Pros

Decent pay, ability to work internationally, ability to work from home on Fridays, above average social events (as long as the company is making money)

Cons

Basically the job required a ton of time, multiple weeks, weekends, and holidays to be spent at client site even when no work was being done. Far more concerned with the appearance of "hard-work" than the delivery of quality work.

Advice to Senior Management

Get a clue. You're not an elite consulting firm, so don't treat your employees like their priveledged to be working for you.

Pros

Recognition. Resume Experience. Working here will help you get in the door somewhere else much easier. This is a great place to start your career, but not finish it.

Cons

Extremerly hard to move up once you make it to experienced manager. The new compensation model is terrible and keeps your salary low and just pads the pockets of the partners.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide people with the opportunity to move up and reward them accordingly for their hard work. Stop being so stingy with the $$ and pay people fairly. The 401(k) is a joke compared to other companies.

Pros

Strong reputation, incredibly sharp people, diverse internal culture, outstanding training/mentoring programs available.

Cons

Very long hours and extensive travel, which are generally offset by generous paid-time-off policy.

Advice to Senior Management

I feel that Deloitte's leadership team is doing a very good job with creating a challenging environment in which to work, as well as allowing for a decent work/life balance.

Pros

You have the oppurtunity to work with smart and talented people. Good support to pass the CPA exam. Plenty of PTO.

Cons

Hours are too long. Managers are great accountants, but poor leaders. Hard to maintain the line of work / life balance.

Advice to Senior Management

Partners should spend more time talking with lower levels to better understand the needs and motivating factors of the workforce.

Pros

- Some of the people that work there are really smart. Most of the interns I met were pretty bright.
- If you're an intern, you can usually swing by with 40-hour weeks. I'm pretty sure they try to limit intern hours or something to that extent.

Cons

6 weeks of my 9-week internship were unassigned - that is, I literally sat "on the beach," as they call it there, trying to contact managers and find work. The "work" that I was given during those six weeks was literally busy work - like creating a presentation for a "hypothetical" client. I appreciate the managers trying to keep me busy, but it's completely unacceptable for Deloitte to leave its interns with nothing to do for the majority of the internship. The explanation I got from HR and managers was that there was work in other locations (e.g. Michigan economy sucks), but Deloitte's clients didn't want to pay to fly out interns to their project in the rough economic climate.

I eventually secured a role in a team on a client doing something only loosely-related to what I originally signed up for, but by that point in my internship I had no desire to work at Deloitte and pretty much put in the mandatory 40-hour weeks and peaced out.

The HR people tried to spin the experience in a positive way - saying that I can claim that I "interned in one of the harshest economic climates." Give me a break - all my friends interning at other firms (think E&Y, PwC, etc...) were plenty busy for the full duration of their internship. Most were even traveling to client sites.

Some of the people I met there were really smart, but many others were... let's just say I would prefer not to work with them. Many of the 2nd and 3rd year people I met there seemed burnt out and in a zombie-like state. A lot of the people seemed really stressed out and unenthusiastic about the work.

The other interns I worked with were also unassigned for long periods of time, so I certainly wasn't a unique case. It's clear that Deloitte is really struggling right now. For those choosing between accounting firms, I would recommend going to another big-4 firm.

Advice to Senior Management

Perhaps consider assigning interns to projects even if they can't necessarily bill for the hours they're putting in.