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Booz Allen Hamilton – “Not a good place to work

6 of 7 people found this helpful

Oct 26, 2009

2.0

Booz Allen Hamilton Associate:   (Current Employee)

Pros

Their pay is competitive, their name may look good on your resume, if you are lucky you may work on a project that benefits you or is in your field of interest.

Cons

BAH is not a great place to work, at least not anymore, don't be fooled by the Fortune rankings where BAH is voted a great company to work for, it's bull, an executive even commented once during a networking event that she had never known or heard of anyone who participated in Fortune's ranking surveys, and she's been around a few years. This is probably because BAH handpicks who their reviewers are. Their hiring process is also very dishonest, they lure you with potential work in exciting areas in your field and even verbally offer you perks, but when you join, they throw you into any project (even in work completely unrelated to your field and with zero benefit to your career) where your manager can offload you and get billable hours for the cost center, and the verbal perks, well you trusted the company, and rightly so, so when you complain, you have nothing in writing and how can you fight with your new employer? all you can do is humbly walk away. If they promise/negotiate perks ask for it in writing, you'll see how quickly they rescind the offer. I also think this company is on the decline, going public will destroy their employee and work/life balance first mantra. As we speak they are now aligning themselves to go public and then they will be just another heartless grinding consulting firm. If you just want a job and don't really care about your career, then work here, but otherwise, you are better served working in a more focused company. I put my best foot forward when I was recruited (while gainfully employed somewhere else) and they basically screwed me with(out) perks and the type of work, don't work here, you'll be disappointed. About them going public, well yes, the Carlyle group, a greedy private equity group famous for buying and selling businesses. They bought BAH from the partners, or will pay them when they take BAH public and Carlyle cashes out as well, but their plan may not work out, in this market, they may not get top dollar for the public offerring, thereby ending up with the same amount of money they paid for it. Honestly there have been little changes and added value brought upon by Carlylye besides tightening up utilization of employees (and lowering morale) (which forces managers to make their employees do work unrelated and unbeneficial to the employee) and renaming their practice capabilities, renaming executive titles so they are easier to relate to for external parties, and creating new employee levels to again, better align with public competitors and possibly to halt promotions to keep salary costs under control until the IPO (these extra employee levels also did wonders to the morale of employees, now they have three more levels to get by to make partner, making total levels at around 10, almost impossible to attain at this point). BAH sold me and continues to sell the image of a company that cares, that is different, but in the end, it is just another corporation who only cares about the bottom line, their partners sold out to Carlyle, they cashed out and threw the 100 year old mantra out the window. If you come here, don't expect the world, expect to work hard and on unrelated work to your field, and you'll be happy. Once more, I have not seen any value creation by Carlyle, therefore a higher ipo price than what they paid for is probably not possible, they are probably just trying to liquidate BAH at this point and free up their cash (recognizing the bad deal they got themselves into and as they recognize that they are stuck in a sideways market for years to come). Investors will see the lack of value created and will not pay more per share than the company is worth, no winners here, everybody loses, employees, partners and investors, all for a quick greedy buck...

Advice to Senior Management

Do not go public, do not force managers to place people in unrelated projects to their fields or interests, go back to what BAH great, people and employees first, dollars and cents second (or ipo share price in this case)

Comments (5)

Nov 1, 2009

by hazelnut machiato:

This review is about 75% true. manager are definitely under presussure to make new hirers immediately billable thus you could hired to do A and end up doing E. I think the IPO comments are spot on from a moral perspective.

The IPO is the beginning of the end.
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Nov 2, 2009

by BAH Associate:

Couldn't agree more. The firm's culture is changing quickly, and leadership doesn't care what it's doing to the rank-and-file employee. It's really sad. We're losing everything that made us unique in the past, all the things that differentiated us from "the other guys" and now we are just like them. Just out for short term profit to meet Wall Street's quarterly expectations.
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Nov 3, 2009

by Most associates do nothing but complain:

I would take this with a grain of salt, particularly with the IPO. Booz Allen is a "eat your vegetables" kind of firm, and while the decisions that the firm tends to make are occasionally uncomfortable, no one has been able to offer good data on why the IPO will be a bad thing, or why they should not be billable. Besides conjecture, what do you have to offer?
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Nov 7, 2009

by reply to: Most associates do nothing but complain:

I've got plenty to offer, is it my fault that your overpromised and under delivered on opportunities and work environment?, recall, i was recruited and pursued by your firm, not vice versa. Honestly, I find this firm's practices disgusting, please read on and combine with the original review of this comment string...

Another WARNING for potential new hires: BAH touts the fact that they contribute 10% of your salary to a 401k account even if you don't contribute, that sounds great from the surface. Here's the skinny:

The first year they don't contribute a single penny. Only by the end of the SECOND year do they contribute the 10%, BUT here's another catch, you are only fully vested (meaning you own the money in the account) in that 401k account after 5 years at the firm! meaning that if you leave after the second year, you only get to keep 40% of the
account, if you leave after the third year, you only keep 60%, and so on... this was pointed out in small print on the otherwise glossy and loud brochure that BAH used to recruit me and many others, plus you have a loud mouth recruiter (more disgusting info: turns out the recruiter was a contractor on commission!! not a BAH employee, so I can't even go to that recruiter and demand explanations that recruiter no longer at the company) touting the firm as the best thing since sliced bread, you think the company is so great, you don't really go into the fine print, you trust the company, but here is the truth for all of you to see, their 401k (ECAP as they call it) is hardly anything special.... YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

Lets do the math: Let's say your salary is 100k
BAH 401K CONTRIBUTION AT END OF YEAR 1:$0
BAH 401K CONTRIBUTION AT END OF YEAR 2:$10K
LEAVE AT END OF YEAR 2, YOU KEEP 40%:$4K
AVERAGE BONUS PER YEAR:$2K

BAH 401K CONTRIBUTION AT END OF YEAR 3:$10K
LEAVE AT END OF YEAR 3, YOU KEEP 60%:$12K
AVERAGE BONUS PER YEAR:$4K

you get the point, work at the firm for two years to get a 2k (2%) bonus or

3 years to get a 4k (4%) bonus? this is barely an inflation adjustment, this is pocket change and an insult, but a great deceiving marketing tool, (also recall BAH DOES NOT PAY BONUS to anyone below a Sr. Associate, Sr. Associates and above are a small percentage of the work force at the firm), they tout their 401k scheme as the bonus, how sad..... DON'T WORK HERE!

WARNING 2: They say they will offer upto $5k per year, to educate you, what they conveniently don't tell you is that if you leave within 18 months, you will have to pay them back every penny, with that kind of burden, who wants to take on that kind of liability (debt)? especially in this economy where everyone is actually trying to deleverage?

WARNING 3: they say the DC/VA/MD is a great place to live. NOT TRUE, traffic is hell, if you live 12 miles away it will take you at least 30-45 minutes to get to work and back, you can infer what living 20 miles will do to your lifestyle. Housing is NOT CHEAP, rents and home prices are high, you've been warned, I just wish I had read all this before taking this job....

Warning 4: Many managers are "too busy" to talk to you about your career or challenges at your current project, they know what's going on but would rather have you suck it up and keep being billable, i've heard this from several employees not just me, it's a firm culture thing, not great, not a good place to work, you've been warned!
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Nov 16, 2009

by reply to the reply to: Most associates do nothing but complain:

Actually the vesting period is longer than you made it out to be. You vest over a 6 year period and you're only vested 20% after 2 years. You also don't get the full 10% of your 2nd year's salary... only 10% from the first full month after your 1 year anniversary up to Dec 31.

In fairness, though, the firm probably wants to keep people onboard as long as they can, so that's why the vesting period is so long. This isn't uncommon... other companies have you vest in your pension fund after 5 years, and they don't give you a dime if you don't stay 5 years.
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Booz Allen Hamilton Overview
Web
www.boozallen.com
Industries
Size
5000+ Employees, $4B+ Revenue
HQ
McLean, VA
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