Good for 2-3 years, but gets old - Consultant Bain & Company Employee Review

2.0
Jul 4, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It sure pushes you and you will always be reflecting on how to get better in the job regardless of your actual performance. Good thing, as it accelerates careers for top performers, but not different from any other consulting firm - even heard actually slower than BCG or McK. Branding helps when applying for future jobs. Nice colleagues - made some good friends at Bain.

Cons

Sustainability is an issue, but not as bad as some other offices though. Lots of biases on evaluation and even inaccurate assessment of work quality from upper management when they don't look closely at Analyst's work - ex.: if very inexperienced CTL or Consultant is overseeing team, Principal will believe what gets to his/her ears 100% without understanding the full picture. Very hypothesis driven culture should be a good thing, but majority of the hypotheses are not actually tested as analyses are (very) poorly done to "goal seek" wanted results - I've seen several examples of that. Biases from upper management will for sure impact the results of your work as they are more worried with long term relationship and matching expectations from senior clients - so don't expect to change the world or do cool analyses, but otherwise expect to be one more piece of the puzzle for the relationship - it is a sales organization at the end of the day. Some managers/partners in the LA office can be arrogant or hard headed. Boring projects in the LA office - very few strategy projects, majority will be more operational. Bain is a lot behind other top consulting firms in terms of digital work - just recently started hiring talent specifically for digital projects. Not sure how are things now, but it was chaotic and no one knew what they were doing.

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Bain & Company Response
6y
Thank you for writing a review about your experiences working here. Please feel free to reach out to me or the Los Angeles HR Manager to provide additional feedback. On digital work, in the past few years we’ve increased the number of Bain hires in advanced analytics, human-centered design, software engineering, digital marketing and more to better serve our clients’ digital and analytics needs. It’s critical to our firm strategy that our employees continue to embrace new digital capabilities, and we have several initiatives in place to effectively train employees on digital topics and work in increasingly diverse teams.

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5.0
Jul 15, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good learning and development; can try lots of new things

Cons

Promotion takes longer than other firms; vertical structure

5.0
Oct 5, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Welcome to Bain. I'm going to give you a problem that neither the CEO nor his entire management team could solve. And I'm probably going to give you lots of different opinions and imperfect data sources. And then I'll ask you to focus in on where the most value is and convince all those people with different opinions that you're right. But don't worry, I'm also going to give you a Bain team. Those associates and consultants are going to be tenacious in coming up with creative approaches. Those managers and partners are going to knock down barriers for you, connect you where you need to be connected, guide, support, direct and re-direct you. The office support staff is going to fix your computer after you spilled coffee on it for the third time, find you the unfindable data source, and smile and hand you a baked good after you ask for help re-doing dozens of slides. You are empowered and accountable but you are not alone. And the best part is you can't fail. Because after all, what all those people are reinforcing is that a Bainie never lets another Bainie fail.

Cons

Here's how you know you've made it at Bain. The reward for doing a good job is getting a bigger, tougher problem next time. Meaning, you are always solving the easiest problem you will ever solve again. This takes a lot of resilience and active managing of self-expectations to remember that you are not actually getting worse, the problems are just getting harder. So my advice is to remember that. And then take a second to realize that it would be a lot less fun if the reverse were true. And isn't that precisely why you wanted this job in the first place anyway? It sure was for me.

790
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Bain & Company Response
9y
You have captured the essence of what it means to work here! Thanks for sharing your experience.
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