Fantastic Approach Towards Consulting - Business Consultant Mastercard Employee Review

4.0
19 Aug 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

APT is a compelling alternative to traditional consulting (MBB), and exposes its consultants to advanced statistical concepts and data manipulation skills. Quality and range of exit opportunities are pretty comparable to MBB, albeit you won't have the name recognition. If you see yourself leaning more towards a career in the technology industry (PM, data scientist), this place will prepare you far better than traditional consulting. APT has a phenomenal business outlook. When I joined, the company was growing 25% YoY, and still is today. In fact, some of our biggest problems involve having too many things to do for its consultants. The people here are exceptional, and are very open to giving feedback, should you ask for it. The company is not yet a household name within consulting, but has some level of name recognition amongst recruiters, consultants, clients, and classmates. Despite this, APT has excellent business school placements - this year, we have 2 people in our SF office (~45 people) alone going to HBS. In the DC office, I know of several more who are going to Stanford GSB. There is a wide variety of tasks that business consultants are exposed to, including data manipulation, analysis, presentation, and client relationship building. We work with a wide number of industries, spanning traditional retail, CPG, pharmaceuticals, entertainment, technology, restaurants, hotels, finance, etc. The work life balance is generally good, and this is bolstered by a culture of traveling only when necessary. Standing desks, monitors, keyboards, noise cancelling headphones, and more are all provided to consultants to help them be more productive. There is room for international travel, and transfers across roles (e.g. consulting to marketing to product management) or regions (SF to DC to Australia to Taipei) still occur every year.

Cons

APT staffs its consultants across a number of clients. Most consultants here are on at least 5 clients, which means that the work can be very spiky. Compensation is the best in the consulting industry for the entry level, but is quickly outpaced around 2-3 years in. This growth rate will be irrelevant if you only plan on staying 2 years or less. Due to lots of turnover across consulting clients, consultants need to constantly retrain new non-technical employees in the complicated analytics that our software performs. Helping clients figure out which buttons to click is a tremendous exercise in frustration. The work can quickly become repetitive, but that is also due to how effective the software is at mapping a diverse set of problems down to the same problem - test vs. control scientific experimental design and analysis. There is a huge amount of turnover in the SF office, which leads to consultants often being asked to fix things that are poorly documented, without any original context.

Explore other reviews about Mastercard

5.0
23 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

People are highly intelligent and things seem to operate efficiently

Cons

Large ship so changes are hard to make

4.0
27 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Mastercard does a great job fostering an inclusive and supportive environment. There are genuinely good people throughout the organization, and leadership often invests in employee engagement through events, recognition, and culture-building initiatives. I enjoyed many of the relationships I built while working there, and there are teams that truly care about collaboration and supporting one another.

Cons

Compensation at the director level did not feel competitive compared to the level of responsibility expected. Career advancement can also be extremely challenging due to how top-heavy the organization is with senior leadership roles. There are a large number of Senior Vice Presidents, sometimes without clear scope or experience aligned to the title, which creates limited room for high-performing employees to grow. At times, it felt like senior leaders were being hired primarily to manage or communicate with other senior leaders, rather than drive meaningful operational impact. In product and go-to-market roles especially, priorities are often heavily driven by funding decisions. It can be frustrating when projects suddenly shift in importance or remain underfunded for long periods of time while awaiting senior leadership review. This sometimes leaves highly talented employees in limbo, unable to move initiatives forward despite strong momentum or market opportunity. The organization can also be very comfortable with the status quo, which creates a slower pace that many employees seem accustomed to. For people who are highly motivated and eager to drive change, it can feel difficult to navigate the number of roadblocks and layers of approval required to move initiatives forward.

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