For the record, I don't work for PA (think green dot) and I come in peace. What I don't understand is the sentiment of posters against PA - is it really that bad?

Oh come on, Not a PAer - you're just being a WUM

In a word. No.I'm guessing that there are a small number of people out there who've recently had to face a few ugly truths.

Eet eez all a conspreenzee from Messuuure ZarkozeePee Aaay weeelll be ze best wary wary soon

In response, no, PA isn't all that bad. Despite the doom and gloom mongering on here, the business is still robust and apparently still doing ok allowing for the downturn that's impacted all firms pretty hard - my guess is that consulting revenues per consultant should actually rise again this year given the recent headcount reductions discussed on here.What's often said to be a weak point about PA by people I've worked with is its management. It has a CEO who needs to be more visible and a highly experienced chairman whose current mandate is not clear - which leaves the COO who by all accounts is a good egg. Working at PA is ok as well - lots of really friendly people most of whom have solid industry experience. The T's and C's aren't great though - a hopelessly outdated leave allowance, lowish pay and a bonus structure that's not transparent, consistent across practices or even very good in terms of the amount paid when the Employers NI and "retained" element have been taken off.PA is the sort of organisation that really could be a great company if only its management took the brave step to modernise the company. Most of the staff seem to hope that will happen at some point but for my part, I couldn't see any real change happening any time soon. As for me, I didn't want to play the wait and see game and left earlier in the year to join a bigger firm. I'm not sure the mix of client work is much different but I have benefited from more pay, more leave and am already looking at promotion at year end.

I do wonder how much the perception of PA internally depends on where you are in the structure and which practice you are in.

The points raised by ex-PA are spot on in terms of the management. No-one really knows what the Chairman does these days but he is an experienced and capable guy. We brought in Ian Barlow from KPMG and no-one is really sure what he does either. Agree the CEO needs to be more visible. There do seem to be two power camps - the COOs office on the 4th floor and the CEOs office on the 3rd. The CEO has no experience of running or growing a business unfortunately. It's been said before on this forum but some fresh blood at the top would be great - just some energy and new ideas would help!

PA Consulting is the only mid to large size consulting organisation that failed to grow in size over the boom 1997 - 2007 period, due to a complete lack of ambition by our partners.Now that business has turned down, and as a stand alone consulting organisation we have no release valve in terms of an accounting or IT business to underpin this slide, we are experiencing severe pain. Now that the public sector work is drying up (and even without the memory stick damage) it's only going to get worse.How long before the next round of job cuts? Before Guy Fawkes or before Christmas?

Completely agree with the above post - while others took the boom as an opportunity to grow, it felt to me that PA partners took it as an opportunity to harvest easy sales and so lose the discipline of winning the tough pitches. Plus it was so wedded to the mantra that they never made people redundant that they waited too late to make the big cuts, meaning that competitors are circling now to poach the good people that are left. Oh and are also mighty p*ssed off that they got no pay rise and/or promotion.

At least we can all expect a huge bonus in April 2010, which will be dished out in the usual transparent manner

"over the boom 1997 - 2007 period"The same fellow from the other thread...truly your knowledge is shocking. If you think that 10 year period was all about growth then I would at least ask you to run a Bloomberg graph on the S&P 500/ FTSE 100 over that time!

Oh joy - another PA cheerleader (or is it the lonely voice of a solo warrior ?)You clearly do not understand consulting if you honestly believe the stock market indices have anything other than a very indirect correlation to the overall size of the consulting market.Just about everyone else blossomed over the 10 years to 2007, and are now starting to grow again. Just look at the emergence of the Big 4 advisory firms, in addition to the growth of the SI providers, and the smaller niche boutiques.During this time, we had Y2K, the Euro, the growth of ERPs and e-enablement, and the UK government throwing money at consultancies to sort out public sector problems. Every single consultancy of any size and capability latched onto these factors to grow their consulting headcount.PA singularly failed to do this, and instead clung onto easy government jobs just to stand still. The recent rash of PA screw ups, whether it be Terminal 5 or losing USB sticks, and the UK government tightening up on consultancy spend will ensure that PA Consulting will really struggle to get out of the hole that currently is in.

I really do not understand the premise of the points made here.I 'was' at PA for about four/five years and left in April this year. During my time, the work was painstakingly easy (just learn to produce to turgid ppt slides and bedazzle the unmotivated, incapable numskulls who are the public sector (local especially). When on the bench all you do is work from home and do nothing. When I left the company posted it best year ever and at 200m in the bank in reserves (call it inefficient delpoyment of capital, but I'd call it prudence in this capital constrained paradigm).The partnrs and MCs are all non-demanding, none of them are particularly intelligent or creative. All in all PA for me at least (at PC-level) was a complete doss! I was amazed I was actually getting paid for doing something so papably non-value adding.Anyway joined industry - as believe or not you develop more commercial acumen and business savvy working with capital and deploying it rather than developing pointless 50 slides plus ppt nonsense 'advising' on the right course of action.PA will continue to get pointless non-value adding and thoroughly nauseating assignments from the public sector, especially under the Tories. The Tories will cut back on actual expenditure, but will spend more on consultants asking them what they should be doing - mark my words the pain will be felt to the public sector employyes and not the 'prviliged' consultant hierachy - it will be 'happy days' again for what ZB calls the 'charlatan profession'

The money in the bank is thanks to selling off significant businesses (one thing that PA is good at) and the offices at 123, which was well timed.Without these divestments the picture would be rather different.Anyone sitting around on the bench for long periods of time without a pile of pressure on them was (a) lucky (b) in the minority, or (c) one of the "favoured ones"

Worked there for over 3 years with almost full utilisation. Very little ppt, it was mostly large scale project and programme management with a significant level of strategic input and responsibility (not simply PMO) and an even mix of public and private sector work. Really enjoyed it, just fancied a break from consulting for a while.

I'm sure when PA's management team address the valid criticisms on this site - as surely they will - there will be many retractions or no repeat of them in future. When the holiday allowance upped to a level comparable to other firms, when bonus awards don't include employer national insurance costs, when said bonuses are awarded using transparent, objective and mutually understood criteria, when the lessons learned from this shambolic redundancy round are applied to the next one (if and when there is one) - there'll be little left to whinge about. I'm sure that these actions will be taken - it would stupid not to. Of course, there'll still be the public sector process mapping - but that's tough, that's the business.

Why don't you numskulls listen to yucatan delta's post. I think it accurately and concisely desrcibes PA's state. Not that bad in fact - as long the public sector level 0-3 process mapping exists as a tradeZB

A trade? It's a blooming industry for PA. Half the local government bodies in this country would collapse if it wasn't for our Casewise models

PA is cash rich. My understanding is that an £80 million cash profit was made on the sale of the beloved 123. Surely PA could have managed to pay larger redundancy money to all those people it ruined their lives or was it thinking of the balance sheet again.

Hi,I am really tired of reading about PA bashing (frankly I don't consider it any good either). But can we please have some more constructive threads other than PA pay, PA alumni, PA redundancies!

This is a very fair posting, I too moved on about two years ago, found life in a bigger firm more fun and decidely more rewarding. The PA package is slow to release value and heavily skewed to benefit the very most senior partner ranks. There were more than the normal level of good people at PA going off on "sabaticals" who had mental health problems, more often than not caused by their work life experiences. It was a great pity, but the measurement system was truly devisive, surprising for a firm/industry that should be highly collaborative in order to deliver great projects for high fee paying clients. Still have lots of good friends at PA - nice bunch of people. Shame about the way it's run - consulting can be a really fantastic career, my advice is take the plunge and move on. The performance management system at PA was designed by someone without a real consulting background before PA, and who choses to ignore its shortcomings. It was quite experimental to start with, but sadly the learning stopped and those in charge would not vote for change - most of them have great client "farm" accounts. They hoard sales credits from these. There are lots of partners at PA with the majority of their sales from just one long term "farm" account and lots of new comers struggling to "hunt" down a new "farm" for themselves. Meant that some more talented individuals were not getting rewarded and some fat and happy "farmers" were keeping a tight grip of their turf. Not good for clients looking for fresh ideas and top talent from PA. Some clients complained about this specifically when I worked at PA, and the firm usually responded, but it took something as serious as a client complaint to flush out the issue.

Agreed, it's time to stop bashing PA. I used to work there and it caused me health issues but I managed to put the past behind me as I hope everybody else who is unhappy there there can do too. Getting bored of hearing about it now.

All very good points ex-pa2. I worked in the BOP practice for a couple of years, and recognise much of what you have said. The BOP partners relied on a number of large public sector jobs, and one large logistics company. Staff joined BOP and could work for the same client for years on end, making buckets of cash for the partners, but getting no real skills. I have seen a number of people really suffer under the strain of work, and the either leave the company or transfer to another geography. So long as you were making pots of cash for the partners, they couldn’t care a jot about your personal welfare.

Boo hoo ex bop. What, a professional services firm has to work for their wage? You're so out of touch.

Hmmm... typical of the warm and caring attitude that PA partners have towards staff. No wonder they are constantly pillioried on this forum for their "screw you" management style.

Our company is more concerned about the duty of care it owes clients, compared to the duty of care owed to employees.

Oh come on, they care about maximising profit from clients. Duty of care isn't the priority. It has no place in a moral vacuum.

I fear that the shambolic way that PA is being run is about to come back and bite many of the partners on their derrieres - quite deservedly so in some cases, less so in others.PA seems to be afflicted by a general malaise at the moment - people leaving for better paid jobs with rivals and those who remain increasingly working longer hours to keep things going.Although PA's "partners" aren't really partners in the traditional sense, they do still have influence and the means to improve the lot of the staff and the firm as a whole. What's not clear is whether they really appreciate how demoralised a lot of the staff are at present or have any real plan in place to improve the situation.

As the original author of this thread it's pretty clear that there are two schools of thought when it comes to PA. That being said, I always thought there was a pretty simple concept in life - if you don't like what you're doing, find something you do like. Whilst I sympathise with those who seemed to have been 'screwed over' what sense is there on dwelling on the past? I used to frequent this forum because there was rational discussion about consulting. Clearly this is not the case anymore!

@ButcrackSuch a mature post.Don't you have homework to do?

When they closed the Sydney office a few years back, having only opened it two years previously, they left all of us transferees from the UK without local jobs or an opportunity to transfer back to London.This company has no morals, and I am delighted to see them suffering now

The thing is, they're not suffering. They're just pushing that notion to get people out the door. Some people in the firm will make record bonuses this year.

Excuse me if I am behind the news a bit but did they ever find the missing memory stick? (genuine question).

This is such a morally correct company that people with decades of service are thrown out of the door so to speak with little or no compensation. PA is the only company I know of that treats staff in this way. It would be interesting to find out how many of us submitted form ET1 to the employment tribunal in time to meet the 3 month deadline following the expulsions at the end of August. I hope at least 75% of us submitted these ET1s and that PAs legal fees total more than the total of all the redundancy payment. Morally PA are bordering on being totally unethical. I feel sorry for everybody that is left and waiting for the chop. The french revolution comes to mind and the 'chopping machine' for loping off heads.

When and where will these tribunals be held?

Unfortunately there are possibly many companies out there that do this kind of thing too (albeit small ones without the big reputations to defend). However, I doubt so many of them are doing it while talking such total rot about their ethical credentials as PA does.

To the top!