Avanade is a strong, committed company that faces many of the common challenges in professional services.
Pros
Avanade is small enough that employees still can make a large impact and have significant advancement opportunities if they do their job well. Avanade values strong technologists and provides a very strong training program. For people looking to see the world, Avanade, being a global company, offers the opportunity to work in many locations in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Avanade's people are generally top-notch and go above and beyond to get the job done. As a company, Avanade values its employees and tries incredibly hard to keep employees happy. The company provides generous training, benefits, timeoff policies, extended benefits/technology allowances, and vacation. Overall, the company believes in its people and acts like it.
Cons
Professional services is a difficult business from a work/life balance perspecitve and Avanade faces the same challenges that many services firms do. Consultants are on the road a significant amount of the time, spend significant amounts of time in hotels and airports, and the lifestyle is generally not conducive to family life. As such, many strong people leave the company as they marry, have children, and seek a balanced life. In addition, Avanade has grown to the point where it's no longer a small firm (over 8k employees) but still lacks the commitment when it comes to basic people resources and infrastructure required to run a a growing company. People management and processes typically take back door as employees are consultants 95% of the time and managers maybe 5% of the time. At Avanade, it's absolutely critical to have a strong advocate as your career manager. Failure to do so will have a negative impact on your career.
