At a critical junction; will face either terminal decline or renewed strength
Pros
At its best (which is a hit or miss occurrence sadly), I do believe that Strategy& gives employees an experience on par with any of the top strategy houses. This includes: - Exposure to top-level executives and Board members - Challenging, analytically intensive work -Rapid acquisition of new skills and advancement through the ranks The compensation package is solid and the Firm has a respectable client base. Some of the legacy Booz Partners who remain are legends in their own right and world-renowned strategists. If you're lucky enough to have one of them take you under their wings, you will have a materially improved experience than many of your colleagues.
Cons
Numerous, unfortunately: -Ironic for a strategy house that does operating model design work, we still seem to have not quite figured out the integration with PwC. We claim to be a separate brand and yet even senior-leader Partners only use "PwC" brand in front of clients. Clients are, not surprisingly, balking at paying former Booz rates for what they perceive as a fully integrated PwC talent pool, causing our Partners to aggressively understaff projects to hit their margin targets (read: don't expect to have any modicum of a personal life when staffed on projects, not even on most weekends. 8 AM to 2 AM days back-to-back are not uncommon.) -Alignment into industry verticals (a horrible PwC structure) forces junior professionals to "choose a major" too early; this also inhibits cross-staffing of talent leading to some of the severe bench issues (see below) - Currently there is a major misalignment between our resource bench and the pipeline due to flagrantly negligent overhiring at the campus level last year. This is leading to many resources - particularly newly hired ones at the Associate and Senior Associate level - sitting on the beach without work for months at a time -PwC is just wrapping up a major internal re-org which seems to have overlapped with the performance management season. As a result, few folks feel any job security at the moment. People are being fired left and right, and the rumor mill is rich with tales of pending mass layoffs. Some junior folks have recently been fired within their first 7-8 months of joining the Firm for low utilization - a metric over which they have zero effective control -We seem to lack a robust mentorship culture, and this becomes most apparent at the Manager level. Many of our Managers were beaten to become highly effective Senior Associates - i.e., they're great at pumping out slides - but never trained on the basics of how to manage. Never in my career have I dealt with a collective pool of managers with such low emotional intelligence and no clue as to how to build a highly effective team. -The annual performance evaluation process is opaque; some people literally don't know if they will be promoted or counseled out until they get an email from HR - Training - particularly new hire training - is wholly insufficient in terms of preparing you to carry out the basic tasks of the role
