Accenture Employee Review

Current Employee – been working at Accenture full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Accenture is really good about making "things" available to employees (free training, volunteer opportunities, community connections, networking events, generous vacation...). Project roles are generally engaging and challenging with opportunity to learn and grow from a knowledge-base perspective

Cons – "Work Hard/Play Hard" generally equates to "Work Hard".

Bench time is not only frowned on, it puts a target on your back for a RIF.

But my biggest complaint is the upward mobility. The "up or out" model worked when there were ~25,000 employees with very few experienced hires. The company is now over 250,000 employees, and Accenture hasn't figured out how to hire in the needed leadership talent (Senior Executives) while still promoting their Senior Managers. There's a stall point when promotions stop and it becomes nearly impossible to make the jump to SE. But with an up-or-out mentality, they still expect Sr. Managers to deliver above-average results in order to get fair raises and bonuses.

And the laddering system makes it even more challenging; as much as Accenture tries to keep it fair, it's still a game of politics and loopholes where projects rate individuals, but individuals are not allowed to know what rating they received. That's a broken system.

I've seen many good Sr. Mgr. peers leave for greener pastures where they're made "partners" or "directors" b/c Accenture failed to value their experience, opting to hire in a Sr. Exec in lieu of promoting the SM. I'm contemplating the same move...i fear my talents and efforts are not justly recognized here anymore.

Advice to Senior Management – figure out how to keep the talent you've grown in-house and maintain satisfaction. Doesn't have to be promotion to SE, but has to equate to acknowledgement of experience and "real" raises and bonuses.

And fix the rating system. Why should an individual NOT know how they were rated by a project, and why wouldn't the project leadership have a responsibility to own up to their judgement and talk an individual through the rationale. Employees deserve to know what rating the project gave them and why. Can you imagine a college class where you (might) get written notes from the professor, but they have no bearing on your grade. Your grade is based on test scores that you're not allowed to see...you just get a grade at the end of the semester and are asked to have faith that that's the grade you earned. Oh, and don't ask anyone else what their grade was, either. It's broken. fix it.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend