Exponent Reviews

There is no Cost of Living bump for employees living in different parts of the country, so Bay Area employees are getting the dirty end of the stick in terms of purchasing power compared to their counterparts in, say, Arizona. This definitely won't change anytime soon. Being a consultant is not a convenient career. Weekends at work can happen, and once you are identified as someone who is willing to work on a weekend then be prepared to get called in frequently. Client-imposed deadlines are occasionally insane and some project managers promise more than they can deliver within a reasonable time frame. Generally people are very good to work with, and very smart, and very thorough, and focused on quality. However, insane deadlines and workloads that Exponent gets from certain clients has caused quality and technical merit to start slipping. That is something that would never be accepted in the early days of "Failure Analysis Associates" but as Exponent is a public company, make NO mistake, they are all about the bottom line. Expect management to cost cut as much as possible, and expect that bringing in quantity of work is more important to the bottom line than quality or technical accuracy of the work product. Each work product is reviewed before sending to clients (this is a good thing) but there huge differences in the quality of the reviewing skills of various people. In some cases the review system is a major roadblock to getting good work product out the door to clients who are dying to get a report in their hands. In other cases the review system is rushed to get a report out as quickly as possible. In all cases the review system makes accurate budgeting difficult for anyone who is acting as a project manager, and adds considerable expense to the clients...resulting in the burden for overbudget projects sometimes landing on junior staff who unluckily got saddled with a "project manager" role. If upper management doesn't know you or doesn't like you for some reason, advancement can be very difficult. Some Principals seem to be the favorites of upper management while some people stay as Senior Manager for a long time just barely below the Principal level.

The majority of what is rhetorically taught at Exponent regarding company and professional growth is actually polar opposite to how it began, and also to how everyone else exceeds as consults in other companies in the same exact field. When Exponent was founded, it was founded based on people who were exceptionally well in a focal dedicated field. They were very good in their focal area, were well known in that focal area, and cast a specific, purposeful net into the large endless ocean for which consulting work exists. The exponent today casts the largest net possible to catch as much work as possible regardless of whether who is pulling in the net can actually do the work, whether that work aligns with the focal goals of the practice, or whether the work aligns with the professional goals of the consultant. This strategy is magic for the financial goals of the practice and share holder earnings, but detrimental to the vast majority of employees. In Exponent, every manager will tell their associates that key to becoming a Principal is many things, but the first of which is becoming known and respected in a singular area. I invite you to review the professional profiles of those in each practice and evaluate what many of these professionals are focal experts in (Note: everyone there is very very smart, this is not a knock on the quality of people, only observing the general result of the Exponent Business Model). You will likely find that the majority of people are general technical consultants which again is great for the company, but absolutely detrimental to professional growth. If a person after several years is known for becoming more general, then what will people actually come to them in the future for?The result of the Exponent business model is it actually prohibits the the upward mobility of its own people. The cascade is easy to follow. Bill more hours, Become more general to bill more hours, Do good work, Get awarded more billable hours, Get rewarded for billing more hours, Become more general, Bill enough general hours consistently to become a Manager,become unable to sustainably or consistently secure your own clients due to lack of focal expertise, career stagnation, Continue working for the Principal as their right or left hand, bill more general hours, continue until you become lucky, understand the cascade, or turn down work to focus on your core expertise at the risk of peer pressure, potential for getting fired, or otherwise. In this cascade, the Principal who hands out the work continues to thrive while everyone below them flounders more. Exponent will not train people in how to become good consultants, Exponent will not train people in carving out their expertise, Exponent will not help people manage. The only thing that Exponent will help you do, is to encourage you to bill as many hours as possible. This is the story for the vast majority of Exponent employees. This is evidenced by reviewing how long the principles have been with exponent and comparing it to those at the mid levels which have been there sometimes quite long, and the lower levels which cycle continuously. People don't leave exponent because of the work. People leave exponent because the business model does not support the sustained growth of positions below the Principal level.