Pros
- With so many different projects and clients, and the short-term nature of most projects, you work on several different projects in a year and end up learning a lot of different ML/DS/DE skills, techniques and applications. There's never a boring moment because there's always some other task that could use your help. - Most colleagues are very engaged in the work and in self-improving their skills and keeping up with the latest in ML. It's very collaborative and the excitement is contagious. - Almost all roles on a team are "client-facing" and everyone is present at client sync-ups, which is a good opportunity to understand users and their problems deeply. - No expectation of working on weekends, though some folks certainly spend Sundays catching up on the latest in ML! - If you thrive in a hustler/achiever environment, this is for you.
Cons
- Unlike bigger companies, the technical/engineer roles are not separated from the client-facing roles so engineers need to spend more time/energy dealing directly with clients rather than focus on the pure technical side. - Moreover, being a consultancy, the culture celebrates Sales wins more than Engineering wins, and everyone is encouraged to be Sales-minded. - The work was also quite stressful in my experience because of working on two client projects at the same time - there was never a moment to catch your breath - there was always a deadline looming and you could never explain to your client that you were busy on the other client's project.