No growth, low pay, Bain acquisition wringing staff dry for profits
Pros
For now, there are some incredibly bright people at Guidehouse who make the day to day worth it on projects. But you have to be lucky enough to get placed on their projects. Project mobility is low, so if your team is awful you’re stuck with them.
Cons
Low pay compared to competitors. Raises outpaced by inflation. Pitiful bonuses. Rigid pay structures that do not reward performance. Bain acquisition is forcing new utilization targets (time billed to clients vs not billable, like business development) that are unreasonable. They’ve taken away floating holidays. They are now expecting more business development work to be done outside of your 40hrs of client work a week. The DTO model is basically a lie because of the utilization targets, they just don’t want to pay you out for earned PTO. Essentially, Bain is making us do more for less. Additionally, there is no professional development here. It is almost impossible to build your career in topical areas you are interested in. They’ll stick you on one type of project and that’s all you’ll get. Leadership is absolutely tone deaf, C-Suite to managers. I’ve never received more irresponsible and shady C-Suite communications. There is no structure for upwards feedback, so terrible managers stay terrible managers. Everyone here is drained and overworked. The politics here are the same as at competitors, but at least you’ll be paid more.
