Booz Allen Hamilton reviews

Training dollars have not increased or changed in years, but it's always up for review... Demands for your personal time (any time beyond 40 hours with the client), although this seems to be a problem with society in general. Bonuses start at the Senior Associate level, which is absurd since the levels below are working just as hard and should receive just compensation via bonuses as management/leadership. The bonus structure causes greedy thinking by management, but just make sure those who don't get bonuses don't know just how much getting and keeping the bonuses high causes increased work and pain for them. That way, we can continue to get them... Company is getting too much like any other company with the recent venture capital company influence into its operations. The place is feeling like you better keep up those huge profits or else. Areas such as travel are getting more like working for the government instead of the way the place used to be when it was smaller, friendlier, and with people who could/would take the time to care about subordinates. Too many expectations of using personal time for such things as additional business, assessment writing, "professional development", proposals, et.al. Sure you are given a "charge number" but after a 40 hour client work week who cares! It is still your free time being used up for some "important" task that must be done now/quickly/speedily. Love those Friday, "get this done by Monday at noon" emails/tasking... not! Point is, you end up working two jobs there in terms of hours, but your pay is only working at one job. Contractor-to-client and client-to-contractor intermingling/changes make for some strange situations; not sure this is a con, but it's definitely not a pro. There are more, but I have a life now so what am I doing here writing about my former employer?

If you're working on client site, it's easy to be forgotten. The new "Lead Associate" level has yet to be properly defined. There are no clear promotion criteria...it changes from team to team. Too matrixed. This is NOT the same company it was even 12 months ago. I find very little to distinguish us from SAIC, General Dynamics, etc... The current state of growth is unsustainable...furthermore, an organization can't grow 20% year over year for nine years and still expect the same level of small-firm "intimacy." Everything now is about the bottom dollar, courtesy of our Venture Capital partners. Anyone who doesn't realize this is blind. And finally...the market is starting to shrink (fewer discretionary and suplemental government dollars). This will put the firm in a very precarious position in 12-18 months when it has to compete and win large procurements to just keep market share. At that point, Booz Allen becomes a commodity broker (see other firms mentioned above).