My former boss, who at one point in his life worked as a garbage man, was an exceedingly abusive, dishonest, and highly unprofessional person. He was a blue collar man in a white collar profession. He used to sexually harass coworkers and secretaries and made obscene jokes about gays and minorities, but somehow he got away with it because he was in charge and either no one wanted to make a stir by complaining to upper management or the managing principals turned a blind eye to his behavior. He was highly skilled in lowballing reserve requirements to make his clients happy to win and retain business. Reserve calculations have PLENTY of wiggle room for these dishonest actuaries to pick low development factors in order to force a low reserve requirement. He's now in charge of the P&C actuarial side of a big accounting firm, in New York. Whoever said the big accounting formers have high moral standards?!! I really think this guy should have been fired long ago and have had his FCAS designation revoked by the CAS for dishonest and unprofessional conduct. He was admired by a few colleagues at Milliman and a couple of underlings for his successful career (as a slave driver) and frat boy style behavior. One of his underlings who wanted to emulate him also picked up his dishonest habit of inflating billable hours: example billing 11 hours over 8 hours worked on numerous occasions even during slow months. That dishonest underling also no longer works at Milliman. I think he's now an actuarial manager at an insurance company. Somehow money attracts these crooks into the actuarial profession and they thrive in it, even though they can't make the cut doing anything else that's rewarding.
The hours at Milliman were frequently terrible during annual statement and quarterly statement times. Then there were a few months of total lull after statement times with nothing to do and we had to sit around worrying about our job security and on a couple of occasions the rotten former boss actually joked about laying off his people. I suppose it's not any worse than professionals in high tech, but the pay at Milliman was not commensurate with the effort. There is no overtime pay. "As professionals, you are expected to work overtime without compensation," or words to that effect.
My abusive former boss did not want me to advance too fast by passing too many exams so he openly discouraged me from studying. That way he could keep on paying me a measly salary with meager bonuses. If you had too many billable hours on a project, they'd get upset because they couldn't bill the clients too much and they had to write off the hours they couldn't charge the clients, and the rotten former boss felt that write-offs looked bad to his own boss, so I felt pressure not to have to many billable hours. If I billed too little they'd feel, I was not worth the pay they gave me. This is quite typical in consulting. A few favored star performers got all the perks and special treatment but I was not one of them, but the vast majority were just slaves or cogs on a wheel. They were exceedingly stingy with paying for study materials. I had to make do with copies of someone else's incomplete copies of yet someone else's outdated and incomplete copies of study materials to get by to prepare for the exams. In most cases I ended up paying hundreds out of my own pocket with no reimbursement to buy the study materials.
As a mid-level analyst, my job was complete drudgery, simple spread sheet formulas ad nauseum. Forget about what you learned from your exam studies. You won't be using 99.99% of any of the theories or concepts you picked up from your studies. Like I stated before, spreadsheet work, column 1 + column 2 - column 3, etc, etc, ad nauseum. And you had to do it with complete accuracy. Three years into my term at Milliman and I began to develop beginning stages of carpal tunnel syndrome from cranking out numbers on a spreadsheet at an inhuman rate. It took me years after I left the firm to recover from the injury.
The worst part about working for Milliman (or any actuarial consulting firm, I suppose) for me was having to recall details at a moment's notice from the NUMEROUS reports and spreadsheets I had ever worked on whenever the boss asked for or when a client needed information from the reports right away. Some of those reports could be a couple years old. I didn't have a good memory and struggled in this area and occasionally incurred my former rotten boss' wrath when I could not give him answers instantly on older reports.
If you look at the pictures of all their 100+ principals and associate principals nationwide in their yearbooks, you'll notice there are no non-white partners. You could argue that perhaps there aren't enough qualified minorities good enough to rise to that level or you could argue that perhaps the culture and hiring practices are not conducive to attracting and retaining minorities in this firm. My former boss did not like minorities and did not hire them if he could help it and once even openly bragged about having forced out a few his non-white underlings that he inherited from someone else. I think it's a combination of all these factors that there are no non-white principals anymore at Milliman. They really had to work hard to accomplish this whites-only company among its 100+ principals in this day and age. What are the odds that it's a freak occurrence?
I read some Milliman reviews here on Gassdoor that mentions their Milliman coworkers as being "bright." Well, the Milliman coworkers and managers I had were anything but "bright." The principals and managers had a decent proficiency with numbers, but no facility with theory at all. Some analysts may have very good spreadsheet or even programming skills but nothing really to rave about. The vast majority of them were simply mediocre or average at best. Many are stuck at their level and can't pass exams and simply just gave up at a low to mid level. Well, you aren't likely to find many REALLY bright people at Milliman. Maybe the other reviewers don't know what really bright people are like.
Getting into the actuarial profession was a huge mistake in my life. And accepting that job offer from that abusive, dishonest, and unprofessional former boss was a bigger mistake still. I have since changed career and became an engineer and am infinitely happier and probably make much more money than if I had stayed at Milliman.
