Pros
The reason I joined the company was due to the positive interview with my boss. After 10 years of consulting, when you find a good leader, you stick by them and support them all you can. When my boss left, there was really no reason to stick around because there was no one else to look up to. The only other pro is that the consultants doing the actual work are great. They've sadly earned their consulting stripes by being in the trenches and at the whims of project managers and sales reps. But some of the humblest folk I've met.
Cons
I've been in consulting for roughly 10 years. Oliver Wyman (5 years) -- (transition to data science) -- Inspire11 (3 years) -- (transition to solution architect) --Lovelytics (3 months). My average utilization during those years was well into the 100% because Oliver Wyman worked me to the bone and then Inspire11 did the same. The benefit of working a ton is that you learn a ton, but it's often at cost to your mental health. Consulting operates in billable hours and it's the bane of every consultant's existence. This can be easily avoided if leadership knows how to sell and scope things properly. But when sales and leadership don't understand the product they're selling, it eventually comes back to haunt you. Especially when you sell client work months ahead. I joined as a Senior Specialist, which is the equivalent to a Senior Solution Architecht. There was no real onboarding and everything was rushed. I was asked to help out on some projects for one of their partnerships and since I had a lot of experience with that particular technology, I took on the projects as an individual contributor to pad my billable hours. Most of these were supposed to be advisory roles and not much hands on keyboards. All of them started late, and if I did subcontract work for the partner, I'd have to log time in Lovelytics system, log time into the partner's system and hope they match or else I'll get 10 emails from various people telling me I messed up. When you get on a subcontractor project, you're at the whims of the partnership's project managers. Now this particular partnership is on the pre IPO grind and will do anything to get a sale. And let's be real, most Agile project managers don't understand the technology. So as an individual contributor, I had to manage my own time, teach the project managers why they massively underscoped projects and why these deadlines are artificial. Needless to say, I got banned from doing subcontractor work lol. Then I started having 1:1 with everyone in the company to get a feel for the culture and that's when I noticed how political everything is. The company has been around for 7 years and started growing remotely during the pandemic and it's clear they have no clue how to scale. Politics is why I left. The CEO hires multiple people from his frat and places them in leadership positions. Each of them is only interested in generating revenue in the form of "selling work" by underscoping and underbudgeting. Really bad sales strategy for long term growth. But that's the old school consultant ABC/ chasing logo strategy. I did a lot of work behind the scenes (including making up a project for interns on the fly that led to generated revenue) on non billable initiatives. I was working on creating content to get consultants up to speed in skill sets so we don't have to rely on partnerships. But then I started getting accused of "just sitting on slack all day" and "clients wanting me off projects" (the partnership wanted me off projects cause I stood up for our consultants and the CEO made me send an apology email like a child). I'd love to know what client wanted me off a project because I took one of their clients with me when I left (They asked the CEO if it was ok despite my non compete). Avoid this company at all costs. At least with Deloitte and Oliver Wyman you get some notoriety for the amount of work you do. Here, it's all politics and snakes. Love is just a name.