Quantitative projects are woefully under-resourced. No one besides senior management gets paid in bonuses or overtime - yet the backbone of the company is its army of young (21-30) analysts and strategists who are worked to the bone. You are not thanked for staying online until 11pm, it is expected of you - and you will be admonished for not being able to do so with little notice. This is fine in a big consulting firm where your compensation is proportionate to the long hours. But for uncompetitive, inflexible salaries, it is blatant exploitation.
The work itself is designed to trap you into this exploitation. Because it is largely centred on trawling through prepackaged data outputs via H&P's proprietary platform, you are not intrinsically generating value. Nor are you developing skills which will allow you to advance quickly (either internally, or in a new role). You are instead doing the same things over and over. You are easily replaceable. And it takes a lot of obsequiousness to slowly begin to convert into upwards mobility.
Because there is a disproportionate number of junior employees undertaking the bulk of the work, and because of this culture of obsequiousness, the company culture is quite immature and shallow. It can be very cliquey/vain, and the atmosphere is very 'fake'. I found many people with big yet transparently fragile egos. People act like they are important, but the work itself doesn't require people to be intelligent - so they aren't. It's all smoke and mirrors. Of course, not everyone is bad. I met some brilliant colleagues along the way with whom I was very friendly. But the worst of the bunch easily outweigh the nicer ones - and it's a race to the bottom. It is no wonder that employee turnover is so high.
Finally, while there is a strong emphasis on embracing diversity, non-diverse managers could do more to *understand* their diverse colleagues. It's great to be *among* colleagues who you feel free and comfortable around, but if you are *beneath* someone who doesn't make any effort to take into account your differences, this can cause problems. For me, this was the final straw - and I checked out.
