Booz Allen Hamilton reviews

3.9

74% would recommend to a friend

(10,445 total reviews)
avatar

Horacio D. Rozanski

79% approve of CEO

54% positive business outlook

Booz Allen Hamilton has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 10,445 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Booz Allen Hamilton employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

10K reviews
4.0
Dec 14, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

People are great. Colleagues are all smart, professional, nice people (with few exceptions). Management is very open and takes a genuine interest in their staff's career development, beyond just staffing their contracts. There's a great culture of collaboration and support, nothing competitive or cutthroat. Work-life balance is excellent. Level 1 consultants are capped at 40 and in my experience that is strictly honored by management. Above level 1 I've averaged around 42 hours per week and rarely exceeded 45. If you're working from a company office and not client-site, you'll most likely have flexible hours and telework. Career growth and advancement opportunities are there if you want them, but can be weak if you aren't actively pursuing them. Highly motivated people are able to advance quickly in salary and title from Consultant to Associate. Above that it's less clearly defined, you generally will have to be able to sell work to get the next promotion but it seems like most are able to get grandfathered in to their first management roles when their manager gets promoted. There's definitely a big culture of promotion from within -- the CEO started here at age 23, and I get the impression that the majority of senior leadership has worked here for 10-20+ years, often as their first job out of college or out of active duty military service. Benefits are solid. The 401k in particular stands out-- immediate vesting, great fund choices and fee ratios, 6% match for your calendar year contributions as long as you're with the firm on December 31st. $5,500 available per year for external academic tuition and certifications, and there's great free internal training available on top of that. 15 days of PTO for junior staff, and you don't need to take time off when you're sick as long as you can log in to your laptop and telework.

Cons

The work at times feels meaningless and like a waste of taxpayer money. I suppose that's the norm with federal consulting. The federal government is notoriously slow-paced and bureaucratic-- simple, quick technical fixes can take an inordinately long time to get the required approvals and funding. Everyone seems very content with their work but nobody seems particularly excited. One DoD client I work with manages a multi-billion dollar budget with a series of disorganized Excel workbooks that have no traceability-- they can't get funding to invest in even basic database and analysis platforms. Pay seems to be a little below average versus competitors (~5-10%), counterbalanced by advancement rate. Although benefits are good for the most part, the people who have been here since before we went public will tell you about how much better they were back in the day. If you get stuck on client site, a lot of the pros listed above do not apply. No flexible hours, difficult to network with colleagues and thus difficult to advance your career.

3.0
Jul 9, 2016

BAH

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Working on different projects not necessarily in your own area of expertise. Company offers generous benefits and various educational programs. Under some circumstances the company covers relocation costs.

Cons

BAH is a consulting company which means that employees depend on project availability and billable hours. Sometimes the employment is purely per contract. You are hired when the contract starts and let go when it is over. This approach causes great tensions among employees. As a result many very good and experienced people avoid this company.

1.0
Jun 8, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It's a very demoralizing place where you can do to have your soul drained out.

Cons

I was excited to get hired at Booz Allen Hamilton to manage a team of scientists in a high-powered computing lab. In an unfortunate turn of events, when I got to the work site, I found that I was instead the bottom-rung hourly worker bee in an administrative office with no number-crunching computers, no scientific software, and no database, and that my work isn't actually funded and the contract expires in a few months. I was also not-so-politely informed that my business opinions are not, shall we say, prudent to express. I know it sounds like I must have run over the President's dog, but no, nothing like that happened; it was just one of those bait and switch business situations. I know that they did need my resume in order to try to obtain funding, so perhaps that explains the bait and switch.

Viewing 376 - 378 of 10,445 Reviews

Glassdoor has 11,077 Booz Allen Hamilton reviews submitted anonymously by Booz Allen Hamilton employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Booz Allen Hamilton is right for you.