The awesome staff and client challenges save this review from being one star. Read CONS. - Senior Manager Deloitte Employee Review

3.0
17 Oct 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You'll find some of the finest workers at all levels. I met some of the most creative, intelligent, humble, and professional staff, and worked at the absolute highest levels of top tier clients. I worked with a humble senior executive who I'd find drying the countertops in the men's room, just because it needed doing. Great leaders. The work is meaningful, and typically is focused on solving important, expensive, complicated problems. You may even work with "names" that you see in the news. Pretty cool stuff. Weigh that CAREFULLY against the CONS below.

Cons

Along with all the good people, you will encounter some top-notch jerks, spoiled frat boys, and back-stabbiing managers at Deloitte. It's all about the numbers, your metrics, so some will poach staff from other teams, lay blame at subordinates feet, and game the HR/Review process (Google "Rank and Yank") by hiring shills that they will fire later to keep their teams in place. In any given HR review cycle, which is a ridiculously complicated back-room evaluation called "consensus", where a third party presents your case for continued employment to a small group of HR and partners. The goal? Find the 70% that should be kept, the 20% that should be promoted, and the 10% that WILL be fired. Oh, and by the way, that process essentially brings the delivery at the firm to a standstill for the month of May every year. I'll call it out as others have, forget Work/Life Balance. Once you have your forty billable hours, you have about 40 more hours weekly of expected "Firm Contributions" where you must author white papers, proposals, lead training, and lots of other things the the partners are too cheap to pay to have done. So they blackmail the non-PPDs (staff) into doing this stuff that most other firms PAY people to do, by making Firm Contribution impacts a MEASURED part of your evaluation. Keep in mind, this is an $8 Billion firm, which from the CEO on down, REQUIRES people to work for free, beyond their billable client service. To me, that not just unethical, it borders on illegal. Lastly, when the firm is going to let someone go, there is an elaborate system designed to keep former employees from filing for unemployment benefits. First, after consensus, we'd put people on a Performance Improvement Plan. Give them a couple months to try to rectify the shortfall that put them in the "Yank" 10%. Once they haven't rectified it, call them into a meeting where we'd confiscate badge and laptop, explain they are no longer in service at Deloitte, and explain all the "parting gifts"-- which are actually means by which the firm hopes you won't file for unemployment. Staff get some "salary continuation" for some weeks, and continued coverage of insurances, job placement coaching which stresses "take less salary and get employed faster". Again, it's a nice separation package, but the intent isn't benevolent, its purely to keep unemployment claims (and insurance) minimal for the $8billion firm. Please, before you join Deloitte, weigh the pluses and minuses and interview a lot of OTHER firms, and ask tight questions around all you've read here. Deloitte is crazy--like a fox.

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5.0
28 May 2026
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Pros

Great people to work with

Cons

Might be a lot of travel depending on the project

5.0
4 Aug 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

These folks know exactly what they are doing. They set high standards, and consistently deliver. Their project expectations and planning is excellent. The top level management folks are extremely smart and have a great sense of vision and planning. If you go to company social events (which are very frequent by the way), it is quite easy to have conversations with upper management people (Partners). Deloitte's hiring pattern is very consistent. For the young starters, they hire smart, well spoken, and subtly aggressive candidates. They have excellent training and knowledge management. They have a well oiled and empowered HR and Tech Support group. Things get done pretty fast. Their paid time off program is really great, and pretty straight forward. No messing about. They have a big social responsibility program that encourages volunteering. It also presents a great opportunity for youngsters to take event organizing responsibilities. This can be very very useful. Once, I volunteered for an event where we painted rooms for an orphanage center. There was a young guy who did the organizing. We were 10-12 people, with 3 senior executives actually doing paintwork. Quite unique. I have personally seen that Deloitte's top talents tend to start young, spend a 3-4 years, then take a hiatus to pursue a Graduate Degree (typically an MBA). The firm sometimes re-hires these consultants after their MBA with generous financial incentives. They offer much better packages to folks graduating from top universities. Sometimes they can offer huge joining bonuses. I worked in the IT consulting division.They tend to get top-end projects. On projects, the average age seems pretty low. A lot of 20-somethings, then there are a handful of 30-40 year old people and some senior Management folks. Beginner salaries can be a bit low. (which is expected. It takes some time to build credibility in the Consulting business) Overall, a great place to start your professional career. If you pay attention, you will get seasoned very quickly.

Cons

Work-life balance can become poor, especially during tight project timelines (This is expected in the Consulting Business). The employees have a significant amount of "firm-internal" training and knowledge contribution tasks. There are annual goal expectations. It can get tedious if you continuously work on high demand projects. There is intense competition, especially during targeted promotion/milestone years. There can be some backstabbing. It's part of the experience. It is not as bad as it sounds, and seems manageable. A lot of times, being young and inexperienced has it's flaws. The company has a simple way of seasoning consultants. They get pushed into high pressure situations, and they learn fast, and quickly start managing their own work. But they tend to be blind towards intricate details, especially in complicated IT product implementations. This has an interesting effect. If someone is able to do the hands-on work, everyone else tries to piggy-back on that person for their actual work. The hands-on guy gets overwhelmed, and others try to use him/her as a key resource. -- I personally went through a crunch project, and found a number of people "managing expectations" (piggy backing), while a handful of people actually knew the end-to-end solution and did the hands-on work. This created a lot more work and mental anguish than needed. Because of the expressed pressure, the hands-on guys have a hard time building and growing their reputation and subsequent performance evaluation rating. This also affects the project execution timelines. IMPORTANT: Make sure you thoroughly read through your employment agreement and understand the implications. In recent years, they have started hiring for specific projects ONLY. This falls under a particular "AMS service line". In this case, if your assigned project gets into a problem, you are exposed to the risk of employment termination. Their HR and Management are very helpful, and they will try to get you a new project. But there are several constraints like location, your skills, and limited time. I went through this, and it was somewhat unnerving. This was one of the reasons I ended up leaving the company.

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