Booz Allen Hamilton reviews

3.9

74% would recommend to a friend

(10,441 total reviews)
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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 10,441 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
2.0
May 15, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some staff are excellent (as you will find in other organizations as well). My direct senior staff fell into this excellent group, which was truly the only reason I stayed for as long as I did.

Cons

The hours are completely unreasonable for client-facing staff. Expectation and requirement is to bill 40 hours/week to client work. If you work on anything not directly billable ("B" work) such as proposals (grueling work, "P" work though and not B work) or marketing work ("M") you will be asked to make up the hours you spent on these other business-related tasks in additional B work. This can easily lead to consistent 50-60 hour work weeks, sometimes more. Expect a few 70 hour work weeks. Everything you do that is NOT billable work you will have to make up on your own time, evenings, weekends, vacations, all-nighters. I've been in th workforce for over 30 years post-degree, and Booz Allen is the only place since college where I've had to pull all-nighters. Another con ... The quality (low) of some project managers. Not only in skills (people skills seem to be lacking among many) but in an overriding sense of entitlement and better-than-thou attitude. Makes working on some projects unbearable. The performance assessment system is a joke. It is a 360 assessment, but everyone knows who wrote what about them ... Thus, those poor quality people get rated far too leniently because who wants their PM (or any coworker for that matter) to have a personal vendetta against them? Finally, since the hotelling concept, everyone works at home and there is complete loss of comraderie and group cohesion and no friendships are formed beyond work related phone calls and emails. Very sad. Many in here reported on the loss of benefits. Yes, very true. But for me I would take a pay cut to have the other coins I mentioned above ironed out. Just couldn't take it anymore, left after 6 years.

3.0
Mar 29, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I decided to work for Booz Allen because of the chance to work with some interesting technologies and projects, including biometrics and systems requiring high security.

Cons

The company is a consulting firm and their employee model is one where an employee works on an "engagement" which is a contract that can have a varied duration. At the end of the contract, the employee is responsible for finding another engagement within the company and if they cannot do so within two weeks, they can be fired. Management has no responsibility. There are a lot of opportunities for work, BUT 99% of them require relocation, which is not an option for everyone. Frankly, they don't pay enough to make a relocation like that worthwhile, especially given the short term nature of most of the work. The company really does not invest in its employees. They say they will pay for training courses, but then the money is never available. Even if you do take training, you have to make up the hours in additional billable work. The 401K match only occurs once a year, not quarterly. The upshot is that if an employee leaves in the middle of the year, they can kiss any portion of the match good bye. I don't know any other company that does that. The company talks a good game about ethics and values, but I have seen senior management make decisions where they then require employees to lie to customers.

2.0
Jul 8, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Good diversity of work - Good access to leadership - Training readily available - As far as consulting goes, probably the best for work/life balance (except for during proposal season!)

Cons

- Brutal entry level salaries with some teams, there is no consistency. For example, some teams within the same market bring on new hires based on experience and education. Others do not. There is no reason somebody fresh out of school should be making the same as someone with a graduate degree and a year or two of relevant experience or several years of work experience. It is also hard to comprehend why teams in the same market/client space bring people on 20-25% higher than others. As a career manager, we've brought these issues up to leadership who ultimately don''t act on it. That leads to managers not taking the time to invest in the staff they manage because they know they will be gone in less than a year. - Massive spike in health premiums - Depreciation of 401k plans - Very little time to find new work

Viewing 235 - 237 of 10,441 Reviews

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