This once great consulting firm has become an outsourcing company
Pros
There are pockets of the firm that still retain the former greatness of the Booz Allen culture. The collaborative spirit, adherence to core values, thought leadership, excellence in everything that they do, career development for all staff, professionalism (acting that way and treating others that way), client service, hiring the best and brightest. To date, I have not run upon anything quite like those aspects in my 10 year career. I learned things at Booz Allen that I would never have learned elsewhere, and really the "secret sauce" of what made Booz Allen great could really work anywhere.
Cons
Things were great when I first hired onto Booz Allen in 2008. Then things went quickly south. First the Carlyle buyout in mid-2008 which changed things a little but not appreciably. Then going public in late 2010 when the Partners said "nothing would change" when in fact everything changed (weekly utilization drills, increased scrutiny of expenses). Then the mass hiring in 2011 of unqualified staff for non-existent positions in the ill-timed, ill-advised "Take Share" initiative. Then the mass downsizing in 2011-2012. Bit by bit, the firm has become beholden to the shareholders versus what it was always beholden to: its clients. This has led the company to value a "butts in seats" outsourcing approach to government contracting versus the classical management consulting approach of the gilded age of Booz Allen. No longer are people valued at Booz Allen, they are just a commodity to be sold cheaply. When your task runs out, you're out the door. In some fairness to Booz Allen leadership, the clients (or really, client, the Federal Gov't) don't value thought leadership in the classical sense (The gov't provides the thought leadership, right?). Joking aside, I don't think that Booz Allen knows what hit them since the change was so gradual they really think that nothing has changed in the culture of the company. One last thought and that is that the management at Booz Allen made a fatal mistake in relying on the double-digit annual revenue growth model where the firm's revenue grows fast, faster than the infrastructure can keep up leading to a growth-binge-growth-binge model where profits come from the infrastructure not keeping up. This model may have been great for the fat years, but is dismally insufficient for the current fiscally constrained environment.
