BUT HR say it's 12 years or so; however competition gets stiff at the top.You may be aware that consultancy firms operate an "up or out" culture, so if you are unsuccessful in transitioning up the career ladder in the prescribed time, you will be asked to take up gainful employment elsewhere. I personally can only see me lasting about 5 years in it, then move on.If you wanna plan say the next ten years ahead: something like 5 or 6 years in consulting will get you to project management. Then you can go do an MBA for 1 or 2 years and when you pop out the other end; either take up a Product Management/Business Development role in industry; or do some strategy consulting.Alternatively, re-enter academia, be a professor of business or IT or something. When I want to see what sort of options lie ahead, I do this neat trick:Go to Google, and say I want to know where do Accenture people end up: search for "Resume Accenture" or "CV Accenture" or "Biography Accenture". You will get the CVS and resumes of everyone who every did IT Consulting in accenture. You can see where they are now. The biographies one will bring up corporate people who did IT Consulting.I found, for example:http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2003/smb/bi_john_brennan.pdfReading people's CVs can give you an idea of what "that sort of person" would do.
