What a lot of emotional, shoot-from-the-hip nonsense! How can “most” (i.e. the majority; 100,001 employees worldwide) be MBB or strat house rejects? What rubbish that ACN is good for no one! All capped by a pointless reference to Taylor – or to be specific a reference to just half of his Theory X/Theory Y premise! What a poor advertisement for the management consultancy – half baked analysis based on partial facts and a reference to a management theory consigned to the history books.Bebsy and other graduate job hunters, consider the following to be a hopefully more useful view…Andersen Consulting (as was) was one of the first management consultancy firms to grow super-aggressively. This started way back in the mid-eighties at a time when they were THE firm to join as a young graduate. They offered the best salaries and the best training. The employment brand was second to none in the “big 4” (was big 10). As the firm grew, they standardised their approach (to facilitate growth in scale, but also a symptom of that growth). This meant that the “AC Method” took on more and more importance. Staff were trained in a standard way, did things in a standard way, even found themselves dressing and behaving in a very corporate standard way. This was a strength and a weakness. Great for ensuring that raw recruits became basic reliable consultants, but not so great for independent thought.AC continued to grow, particularly by focussing on larger and larger IT build projects. This meant the firm became more “techy” and business consulting and strategy work became a minority activity. By the nineties the firm also had an “up or out” attitude that remains strong to this day. This and the standard approach to everything (young AC staff were routinely referred to as “androids”) created the basic culture of the firm that has survived and continued post-Enron (and the change to Accenture). The split from the Andersen parent company post-Enron merely polarised this culture, as older, more conservative elements of the firm tended to be within the accountancy parent company (the Enron partners being the exception!!)Since that point ACN has continued to grow and focus more and more on IT, large outsourcing, off-shoring and have developed a “solutions” arm that has little to do with management consultancy.The size of the firm and the focus on IT solutions means that from a pure consultancy employment brand, the firm is not what it was. The alumni has also been greatly diluted, by the post-Enron split, the dilution of the employment brand, and an eventual backlash against the elitism inherent within the firm that many feel is no longer merited.It remains a good employer from those who are interested in IT and want to work on large projects or solutions. In the IT world it is a decent brand, but “reliable” rather than leading-edge. Working hours are just the same as any other firm that derives revenue from client billable projects, i.e. swings from being over-worked while on projects to being totally becalmed while on the bench (both can be stressful if you do not know how to manage it!)I personally think it is too much of a sausage factory for anyone top class, but it would be silly to simply dismiss the firm as “all bad, bad, bad”!! It is a decent place to spend two or three years, get good practical experience post-graduation, get some training and then move on. The other option is to stick it out until you make partner. The thing NOT to do is to get stuck in the middle as a fat-and-balding, soon-to-be-divorced, never-see-your-family middle manager. Of all the MC firms it is probably the worst place to be one of these types of people.
