The Hackett Group Reviews

Cons

Nothing major that comes to mind
Travel excessive
Work life balance
Bad bonus
Pretty flat growth but depends on your style

Cons

No culture, 100% travel and nobody interested in onboarding or helping new staff

Cons

The health benefits are not good and have been reduced a lot in the last year. The organization is lean which means people get burnt out and stressed. There is little to no training and development. In my practice there is little room for professional growth in your career (vertical or horizontal). I've gained a lot of good experience in my roll but I spend so much time fighting fires and getting re-directed by initiatives its difficult to get any specialization or development in my role. Leadership makes decisions in a bubble, there's no clear strategic direction or it changes so frequently its hard to keep up or know what their thinking/planning.

Cons

To keep it simple, they don't care about their employees. The only thing that matters to them is paying themselves dividends.
- If you're on bench, and don't have any good friends in the top of the company, you'll be laid off.
- Assignments are not based on skills but on friendship. So if you get along with your manager, he/she will request you. If not, you'll be on bench (and eventually laid off).
- No training at all, only some web sessions (no longer than one hour).
- HR doesn't know/care about the resources they manage.
- Impossible to make a career plan: there are two evaluations per year, both absolutely useless.
- All development work moving to South America and India to reduce costs: few possibilities in the States.
- Healthcare is the most expensive ever.
- No diversity, no women in leading positions.

Cons

This is a long list. TL;DR version: stay away from Hackett.
- no commitment to diversity. CEO is 30 years behind current diversity practices. Company is full of white males, much like senior management. Exception is the work they source to South America and India.
- no company stratetgy. Strategy is that when the market rises, hire; when it falls, fire. There is no genuine go-to-market strategy; relationships with clients are only valuable quarter-to-quarter.
- your job is not safe. Whenever it looks like revenue isn't going to miss budget, layoffs occur. This is a quarterly event
- no career development. Training is done the cheapest way possible and prepared by staff in their "spare time". Most of it is a rehash of other firms' IP anyway.
- IP chop shop. Most of your time will be spent cutting and pasting slide decks that were created by KPMG, PwC, McKinsey, Deloitte and EY. There are effectively no internal methodologies, branding or standards, so everything ends up looking like whatever the particular project lead's former firm's deliverables look like.
- pay doesn't move. Whatever you earn on day one is very much what you'll earn for good. Bonuses are terrible and never paid as an incentive unless you're friends or family of senior management. Pay rises are pathetic.
- benefits are awful. Health coverage is insanely expensive. They change providers every year so if you have a complex illness, be prepared to jump through a new set of hoops every year. You'll be changing doctors too to keep up with their network coverage.

Cons

The bonuses. Every year they get cut. The last year I was there, they cut the bonus pool and used that money to do a stock buyback (see the 2015 10-k). Senior management also granted themselves a ton of stock. I billed a 600+ hour quarter all year and got 5% of what I should have gotten in bonus. Not cool guys.

Promotions are next to impossible above Director. In the 5 years I was there I saw one person on my team of 12 get promoted from Director to Sr Director. As a result, don't expect raises. My salary went up ~8% in total over 5 years. That doesn't even keep up for inflation.

On top of this, the benefits are terrible. Basic healthcare coverage just for yourself was insanely priced. I paid more for my insurance at Hackett than anywhere else I've worked.

Work/life was basically non-existent. I was on the road 5-6 days a week and worked 60-70 hour weeks.

Cons

Human Resources are probably the worst resources ever: they just don't care about the employees. Consultants have to work long hours, under too much stress. But it doesn't matter, because if they need to manage quarterly earning performance to make the numbers more attractive for the CEO, they will announce lay offs. If you have good contacts (you're a good friend of the principals or you are the daughter of someone important within the company), you won't be fired. It's not possible to build a career here, and eventually you'll be replaced by remote resources in Uruguay, Mexico or Canada. The directors don’t care about their teams: they just want to keep their jobs. No training, no opportunities, no salary renegotiation, no bonus: not a good company.

Cons

I was laid off in Jan 2017 with no heads up, no performance hits and a leader in the next generation software. Not sure of the direction they are heading....

Cons

Poor performance feedback.
Unrealistic utilisation and practice building expectations
Very US centric
Layoffs every year to manage quarterly earning performance
Generally try to avoid paying bonuses or commissions versus using them as incentive

Cons

80-90% travel. Way to much time on the road. Consequently, working enormous hours during the week with no balance. Everything seems to be crunch time with too aggressive timelines. No resources on the bench and often have to do double duty. Understand we are in a revenue generating business but we need to be careful of burning people out.