Excellent opportunities for personal/professional growth...difficult to attain work-life balance
Pros
-People who care about you and your development; with both hard and soft skills. -Hands-on experience, online training, and vendor training for some of the hottest technologies are readily available. -Simply the best in terms of talent...you're working with the best and brightest in the workforce. -Great client exposure. -Salary is extremely competitive. -Benefits are extremely competitive. -Great resume-booster. -This place is the embodiment of capitalism. All about competition. The slackers and those who don't add value stick out like a sore thumb. And the firm is the better for it. When everyone you work with is motivated to do a great job on everything they touch, things get done. They get done well and done quickly.
Cons
-90% of your satisfaction with the firm depends on your project (e.g. if project is understaffed or poorly-managed, you can be stuck in a rough spot for several months...granted you can always add value by performing at a high level in your role, success rarely hinges on a single analyst's ability to add value). -Continuing education classes, compliance training, practice development activities, firm activities, Impact Day, recruiting, all-hands events, service line meetings, Deloitte holidays, government holidays, all count against your utilization. Utilization refers to your requirement to spend 95% of the 2080 hours in the year (52 weeks * 40 hours/week) on client work, which doesn't include any of the things listed above. Usually everything totals to anywhere between 50 and 70 hours per week of work, and the non-client work actually ends up forcibly distracting you from your client work, which is supposed to be a priority. -Retirement benefits are practically non-existent...vesting and accrual start around year 3, with puny matching contributions.