Slalom reviews

1. The "project work" is mostly staff augmentation like business requirements and PMO and mostly IC roles; very little traditional team-based consulting work. A lot of consultants have asked for more strategic work and management does seem not care - they just need to meet their absurd quotas and will "sell" bodies. Slalom is essentially a body shop. 2. The management does not give one hoot about their people. They claim to care about careers, growth, diversity, etc. - but ALL they care about is utilization. Period. They treat the office as a body shop. 3. Sole focus on utilization. You can sell above your quota, but if you are not utilized at their absurdly high levels then they will put you on some sort of an improvement plan. They do not care about building out internal collateral to help sell or anything else; just utilization. 4. Fake Performance Improvement Plans. There were rumors of folks getting placed on bogus "PIPs" as an excuse of throwing them out to beef up utilization and profit numbers. This has happened in multiple markets across the firm. 5. Terrible management. Leadership across the markets across terrible. They would not be allowed in industry but, because they are able to sell tons of work, that is all the company cares about and so, they will continue to go unpunished. 6. Below-market pay. It is amazing how little they pay and if you ask for more, they will push back severely and if you leave for monetary reasons, they will insult you. 7. Leadership only cares about their stock price going up and will do whatever they can to preserve it (like low analyst wages) 8. Lack of diversity at the top of Slalom and the SF office. Also, curious how many other GMs at Slalom in the US are ethnic minorities? Also, why do you not give MLK and Juneteenth off? Is it because you don't want to lose the revenue from utilization that would have been gained on those 2 days? 9. Lack of career advancement. Promotions are pretty much based upon who the senior leadership happens to like and those people are accorded preferential treatment. If you are not one of the "chosen ones," good luck! 10. They waste so much money on the pep rallies. They call these quarterlies (pep rallies) "culture" and say that is a benefit. I felt like I was back in my Midwestern High School waiting for Friday Night Lights to occur! I am sure with this response, I will get some generic response from management asking me to contact them. Why? This is a firm that lies through its teeth. My advice: go to a Big 4, get some real consulting experience (and not BS staff augmentation work) and make some lifelong contacts. With those firms, you know what you are signing up for. At Slalom, you are told one thing and get another. The CEO says he wants to create "a different type of firm?" That is an absolute lie! Good riddance!

I waited a year or so after I left to finish this review, as my outlook may have been skewed at that time...But being in consulting for long enough I'm now positive that Slalom is not the right place for more reserved consultants - who can be very successful elsewhere. Its also not the right place if you are not hyper-competitive against your own co-workers. I tried, but had a difficult time making close-enough friends here, and this could have been my fundamental flaw. The friends I did make ended up being from the client and not from Slalom. I would suggest new joiners to really “bro out” with leadership, especially at the PAL level as this is where there can be egos…If you’re cool and really liked, you could get by with sub-par performance just because you make everyone happy. Hardcore developer types are always needed, so if you’re a pure coder and developer, you’re still valued as you’re churning the machine. I myself became miserable because it felt I needed to succeed in a popularity contest. A few female co-workers of mine also professed that they were frowned upon as "not a culture fit". The culture Slalom prides itself for is not for everyone. The rating for being the #1 place to work for might be for the majority, as I see a lot of people having fun, but in complete honesty its a very Frat-boy like culture. Girls have to look really good.