Got an offer from Roland Berger.Think it looks like a good opportunity, but wanted to check if anyone has any insight into the w/l balance. Obviously it will be long hours (not deluded) but where on the 55-75 range, and with/without weekends?

Tony can probably help you with this one, I think he is a RB alumnus.Regarding the 55-75 hour thing... I would just be cautious of underestimating just how LONG a 75 hour week is. That's equivalent to getting in at 9.00am and leaving at midnight, Mon-Fri, every day of your working life (plus then add on any travel time). Is that sustainable, or is it the stuff that heart attacks at the age of 45 are made of? Even 55 hours is 9am-8pm every day, Mon-Fri. Where does that leave time for the "life" bit of the "work-life balance"?

Here's the deal with these strat firms:You work.They take your life and give it back to you when you're 45, washed out, limp, grey and plump.

But they do pay you extremely handsomely for it don't they? Your assessment is therefore a bit slanted!Let's face it, money and status are most peoples' Gods aren't they(?) and so strat firms are providing what many career ambitious people want and are prepared to sell their "life" for. Not saying it's right and I fall in your camp in terms of the value I put on my "life". This is just as well as I was told by a (no doubt well meaning) recruitment consultant that I wasn't clever or "special" enough to be a strat consultant even with my Oxford degree and scholarships. He's probably right mind you, but hey, I'm now enjoying W/L balance in my 'un-sexy' career in the energy sector and making sure that the lights stay on in the strat consultancies' offices.

To be honest, no firm that I've ever worked for IBM possibly being the exception) has had a decent work/life balance policy. They all expect you to do long hours on client sites, and sales / internal stuff at weekends.I would really question any company that claims to have mastered work/life balanceIn the late 90's we all got paid lots more than industry for this, but not any more

A 75 hour week is very managable- if it means having a full weekend off. You just work monday to friday then have a two full days off. Its no worse than your average junior doctor and I've friends doing phds who often pull worse hours. So you don't get to do stuff in the evenings - most people just sit on their ass watching TV and even the more active would probably give up 5 a side or whatever in order to futher their career.Now, if you end up working 6/7 days and 90-100 hours, IB style, that is a different story.

I wouldn't necessarily call the pay great.... 75 hours a week x 48 weeks = 3,600 hours. If they pay you a grad salary of, ooh, £50,000 including benefits etc.... then that's equivalent to about £14/hour gross. What does stacking shelves in Sainsbury's pay these days? And when you consider the net position and and take in to account tax allowances/rates, the difference is even smaller. The proposition from most strat firms gets even worse once you're a bit older and have kids and a wife that actually wants to see you once in a while (rather than having to stay up for 2am calls from China).

http://i.imgur.com/bifW2.jpgOr whatever...

You ignore the possibility that many strat consultants (esp. the ones in the middle of their career) do not want to spent that much time with the wife. And thus, they welcome with open arms the opportunity to stay away from home.

Wealthy.Industrialist - you've clearly not thought this out properly.Why bother with a wife when you can have a mistress in every port. No nagging, just fun and when you've had enough.....just move on. No messy divorce - no giving away half of everything (and a touch more seriously - no kids who get hurt!!)

Deliberating - my apologies, I didn't see this when it was first posted.My time at Roland Berger was 1996 to 2000, so my experience isn't current - however most of what I observed was a function of the culture of the place and I don't believe that would have changed a great deal...Work/Life balance very much depends on which office you are joining. In Germany RB is 100% on a par with McKinsey in terms of prestige as an employer and in terms of the doors it can open for you when you decide to move on. As a consequence it attracts those who are prepared to give their absolute all for their careers. I worked on numerous projects in London and internationally and without fail I would say that colleagues from the German offices were far more prepared to endure a poor work/life balance for the potential career advancement.By contrast in most (not all) other countries the RB brand is far less compelling on a CV (when compared to other MBB alternatives) and so generally speaking the consultants working there aren't quite so ready to surrender themselves to the cause. In my time in the UK office, people had joined because they liked the fact that the London operation was smaller, friendlier and more entrepreneurial than the MBBBs; this rubs off on work/life balance. If people have joined prepared to do whatever it takes to succeed then work-life balance will generally suffer. If people have joined because they were attracted by other things then collectively the urge to force weekend and late night working on colleagues is that much less.In general I'd say when on projects I worked 8.30am until 7.30-9.30pm most days except Friday (when we'd finish in time for office drinks). Weekend working was generally only needed at the crunch points of a project, so maybe 3 or 4 weekends a year were lost.Hope this helps and good luck making your decision and pursuing your consulting career.Tony RestellTop-Consultant.com