Decent benefits, unique corporate culture, good fit for certain personalities
Pros
- Management is incredibly loyal to the firm, and as long as employees stay "loyal" (ie. attend multiple non-billable happy hours, seminars, mixers, etc) the firm largely remains loyal to the employee. - During a contract protest the firm went out of their way to provide billable work to employees to negate the loss of income. - I truly admire Booz Allen's ability to foster such a fierce and intense loyalty amongst their managers and employees. I'm not sure what they're putting in the Kool Aid, but it must be good stuff. - Booz Allen truly is the shadow wing of the nation's Intelligence Community. They provide fantastic opportunities with nearly every and any agency possible if you have the qualifications/network to make it happen.
Cons
- Booz Allen is notorious for their cult like culture and worship of the firm. - The business team I worked for in Central Maryland viewed any employee initiated movement requests as a problem. There was no assistance in moving to other teams, businesses, etc and applications elsewhere were viewed similar to defections. - Low pay compared to other companies in the intelligence contracting world. Booz Allen managers routinely acknowledged Booz's lower pay scales, but would counter argue that the firm's benefits were superior to their competitors. This is simply not true. However, considering many, if not most, employees are recently separated military service members/government employees with little outside contracting experience, these claims are largely accepted and defended throughout the firm. I received a $20k dollar pay increase upon switching to another company, and this increase wasn't for a different position either. It was for the exact same position that I had when I left Booz Allen. I still sat at my same desk, working alongside all of my same colleagues. All of my benefits are comparable if not slightly better. - Booz Allen's old ECAP program was a really sweet gig, but that went away when Booz became a publicly traded company.