Deloitte Reviews in Seattle, WA Area

Pros

Opportunities to work with all sorts of organizations and get exposure to how different organizations handle similar problems; experience with numerous kinds of work from audit to implementation projects to security assessments to business process improvement work; 5 weeks paid PTO at this level each year; Bonuses for completing a certification related to your line of work (CPA, CIA, CISA, CISSP, etc.); Health benefits include yearly allowance for partial coverage of purchase of certain sports equipment/fees; Opportunities for continuing on to top level management come quicker than at other organizations and bring high salaries/profit-sharing and excellent pensions; Excellent open door policy; Majority of managers are truly invested in the company and strive to see success with their employees; Trainings and reference documentation well thought out and accessible; Ability to specialize in any way you like (so long as you are willing to travel and the opportunity hasn't been fully staffed); Has weathered the recession pretty well and projects are being sold left and right.

Cons

At this level, you could easily be making more out in industry for the same job; Workload balance is not smoothed out throughout the year, and not even just limited to busy season times, meaning typically working more than 40 hours a week; Very hard to disconnect when on PTO or at home; Jobs you get staffed on locally are sometimes more based on HR being able to find a "warm body" than getting staffed on a job to further your career path and specialization; Travel can be very unforgiving; Very stressful at this level, since you're doing the work of both a regular consultant and a manager, and managing both, so many people get weeded out at this time; Majority of ability to move up depends on evaluation/compensation processes, which, if not taken seriously by your counselor or managers to show up or prepare for the meetings, can lead to you getting passed over; Manager abilities and attitudes toward flexibility on working hours/project deliverables can differ drastically; National level all hands calls seem to focused solely on bolstering partners and soon-to-be partners in their good work and disparage and/or ignore any recognition or opportunities for managers and below.

Advice to Senior Management

Be aware that at the current state of compensation, you are losing some of the best talent for new consultants and senior consultants. I have seen far too many of my favorite seniors and managers leave the firm over compensation and the best new potential recruits accept a job elsewhere. I just hope that it is corrected soon enough as we are already severely lacking in experienced senior consultants and a bit management heavy, leaving a big gap to fill between new hires and managers. I am also afraid that by default, many people who stay onboard will be those not found eligible for running a similar team out in industry through the industry interview process and the quality of our work will decrease over the coming years with mediocre management put in place by default.

Pros

Good Pay,Higher growth on showing realised potential

Cons

Follow ruthless Firing policy in US

Pros

Deloitte is full of talented people. It has efficient work processes, many great project and training opportuniites and good PTO time.

Cons

There is no much work life balance because of the long work hours and travel. It is a great place for you if you don't mind traveling.

Pros

Great experience right away
Strong background in accounting
CPA
Good feedback structure

Cons

Promotions are batched
Pay is tough and depending on market below other big 4 firms
Work load between client engagements is not always fairly distributed

Advice to Senior Management

Match compensation practices of other big 4 firms

Pros

Great benefit plans and lots of responsibility right out of the gate.

Cons

Long hours, lack of pay

Advice to Senior Management

Appreciate your people more and provide a better work life balance

Pros

There is no better place in Seattle to learn your craft (taxes) than Deloitte. It is the largest tax provider is Seattle with a high quality client base. Access to education, research and training opportunities is unparalleled and the senior management has a lot of very caring individuals involved in the business.

Cons

Like all large accounting firms, work/life balance is sometimes not possible. Also, at some points, it feels like multiple individual tax practices sheltered under one roof than a cohesive team environment. The benefits far out-weigh the cons, though.

Advice to Senior Management

While transition is very difficult, there are some things that can be done to minimize the pain. There is something very special and unique about the Seattle office - don't lose that in a bid to conform to the rest of the country.

Pros

Young and vibrant employees
Lots of opportunities to volunteer and get involved in community/ social projects
Many locations, giving the illusion that it's easy to relocate
Different career path's and job functions which span diverse cross-functional divisions- helps one grow as a multi- disciplinary professional

Cons

The ERS Role( Tech-Risk) is a whole bunch of managerial / consulting B-S . ERS basically "supports" the Financial audits and is hardly a place to grow if you are technical/IT/CS person. They love to recruit students from IT backgrounds which amazed me, since there is hardly any challenging work in-terms of IT / Strategy / SAP implementation and such stuff.

If that interests you, DO NOT apply for ERS role since you'll hardly get to work on any of those. Instead apply to Deloiite Consulting, if IT consulting is what you want to do.

The IT controls which interns audit/ shadow are a yearly process and get very boring , given its the same documentation rehash year after year after year.

Be prepared to suck-up to your mentor, the consultants ( whom you shadow/ work with) and the Senior consultants/ Managers in your engagement team. Surviving ( leave alone climbing the hierarchy) at Deloitte ( and most consulting companies) is ALL about networking and who knows you and whom you know.

The various intern events are NOT to be missed- at any cost. Some of them are quite fun! And also important for Deloitte's HR to gauge your fit in the company.

Deloitte loves hearing feedback and giving feedback. Think twice before providing any negative feedback. They say they love hearing honest feedback from interns, but it's just a consulting company's way to assess your fit. Any negative feedback that you give them, might rebound back at you in some unpleasant way.

Advice to Senior Management

Be honest to your employees/ interns.

When your give feedback, use big word like "great work" , "we loved having you" etc, ONLY when you mean it.

Provide honest feedback.

Pros

Great networking opportunities
Large variety in experience to be gained
Significant responsibility given to staff
Highly reputable firm
Great benefits package

Cons

Work life balance
Full time travel in the consulting practice
Human Resources organization (review process, promotion / raise process, other HR functions)

Advice to Senior Management

Bring back 360 degree feedback process
Try to get in touch with the junior staff not only on a social level or a project work level, but get a gauge on how they are feeling about the firm and the decisions being made by the firm

Pros

- very high quality, intelligent, friendly coworkers
- easy to fit in and feel at home
- great benefits package
- great name to have on resume, well respected
- good opportunities for learning and promotion if you are willing to put in the work

Cons

- mid level employees are often overworked
- compensation does not exactly match the level of effort required, leads to high turnover
- if you don't love finance and accounting, you will have trouble standing out (because many people at DT do, and they will outwork/outshine you).

Advice to Senior Management

- be a bit more generous when it comes to financing continued education
- improve the mentoring process
- improve the performance evaluation process, there should be more face to face meetings where specific issues are discussed. Also, use incentives to make sure that everyone takes the process seriously.

Pros

opportunities to learn and grow professionally
fun work environment
flexibility in work schedule (not required to show up at a certain time)

Cons

low pay
long hours
lack of perks

Advice to Senior Management

remember to recongize hard working employees both verbally/monetarily. we work long hours and the job was stressful enough in good economic times with happy hours/team outings/parties. Without those perks, the job is even more stressful and it's hard to not burn out.