Pros
The people, the people, the people. ATK people are strong intellectually, and just great people to get to know and to work with. Which is a good thing, because you will be working side by side with them, for long periods of time and generally in pretty crap locations... That said, people are too quick to dismiss ATK as an operational consulting shop. There is a lot of really cutting-edge strategy work happening here: we just don't market ourselves as effectively as the Big Three, nor do we have as strong as a brand. Personally, I have only done one pure operations project since I started here three years ago. The balance of my time: marketing strategy (Consumer products), growth strategy (integrated oil producer), innovation and NPD (finance), and G&A transformation (apparel retail). So ATK definitely can offer industry and functional variety. Another pro is its leadership at the top. Laudicina is a visionary.
Cons
Travel: Travel is non-stop, continuous, and burdensome on the soul. That said, all consultants travel all the time, but ATK is likely worse than some (Bain, BCG) and at par with others (Booz, Mck). A lot can be done to manage client expectations around this issue, and to optimize staffing for life as well as work. Processes: ATK is an 80 year old start-up. AFter the 2005 buyout, the firm started from scratch. So we are still building core processes. Examples: We have pretty mediocre intellectual capital develpoment, dissemination processes and tools, pretty crap financial management at the partnership level (a pareto of partner contribution would reveal a long tail, i suspect), and not the strongest people review processe (although its getting better).