Pretty much every pro is negated by a con:
*If you came from a solid background in the field they basically don't care at all, once you are placed in their interview process your prior experience doesn't matter at all. This means you should probably fight for your position if you feel they are low-balling you pretty severely (some consultants that I worked with were placed 3 levels below their skillset)
*The pay scale being transparent can seem like a pro if you enjoy seeing what your future could look like and what everyone else is making, but it's also not so great if there are vast differences in capability and actual work output, which I found to happen quite a bit. Working twice as hard as the next guy and getting paid the same is just discouraging, especially when it comes to the next point.
*Review periods are held annually and every promotion between major roles has a board. The whole process is run with a "framework/matrix" that basically assesses where you should be based on a number of capabilities. It stands to reason that if you meet 90% or more of that matrix you should fly through the board, but in reality that's only half the battle. If, for whatever reason, your colleagues that control your promotion don't care much for you then they can just block your promotion and you'll have to wait another year. If you find yourself on a multi-year engagement with those same colleagues then you can expect to stick at your pay range indefinitely.
*One tangential item to the above was the idea that you didn't have to play politics at least on the consulting side of the house, you would still have to on the client side. This was categorically false advertising, personally I took the opportunity to test that theory by not actively playing politics since that's usually not my favorite part of the job, but that almost certainly lead to the blocked promotion. Play politics as hard if not harder than you think you should if you don't want to get stuck in promo purgatory.
*There's an illusion of a growth culture where they have all these touchpoints to talk about how you should grow as a consultant, these take away from billable time, but more importantly they are actually seemingly designed to force you into a mold, which is namely that matrix I brought up earlier. There are probably other posts in here that talk about "kool-aid" or "dolphin drone army" or things along those lines, it is the combination of factors above that contribute to that sentiment. You are either moving up or moving out.
*DEI: DEI is prevalent in the industry, so it's not uncommon to see it. It was noteworthy, however, that the DEI training here was over the top and basically guilt/victimhood sessions. There was a certain irony for me in particular as not being a fresh college graduate talking about a scenario where an older fellow was being ignored because he was older (people figured he was out of date), yet that same thing happened to me on several occasions, to the point that my prior experience was outright discarded entirely even if it was completely relevant to the problems at hand.
*Placements: The interview process is pretty much an all day event in the office and I've now run several dozens of interviews and properly placed many folks (most interviewers will place you 1 level below where you probably should be with an early promo period to play things on the safe side). I met about half a dozen local employees that were easily placed 2-4 levels below where they should have been based on their technical expertise and years of experience. Most people accepted the poor placement (myself included) as "I have room to grow and this is the place to grow". This is a trap, do not do this to yourself, make sure you have at least 2 other placements from other companies before you accept a job here.
On a final note for the placements, it was quite apparent that the long and convoluted interview process doesn't work very well. This is easily explained by my personal history of employment: going from Principal to effectively their Junior Consultant, then back to Data Engineering Team Lead, and finally Solution Architect, all within 3 years. I was not the only person to experience this. Most people that ended up leaving (the turnover was very high) saw great improvements in their career within 6 months of leaving. The people that do end up staying are pretty apparent from the moment you meet them.
