Ask HN: Working at a Big Four?
11 comments
How exactly would you define work/life balance? You will typically travel 4/5 days a week. Even if you are lucky and only work 40 hours a week, you are still not home. If you have a family and you enjoy being with them, then every hour you are not home is work even if you sitting in a hotel.
When I was in consulting, for every trip to insert great city here I did 9 trips to some IT/Finance back office in the suburbs. At one place there was nothing for 15 miles other than a Hampton Inn, a Subway, and a 2 other local stores. So it's not like my off hours were fun either.
I think it's worth it to do it once. When I did it I gained a lot of experience with both technical and soft skills. The soft skills have helped me a lot in my career. You also learn a lot because you get to see how big companies really work and experience the variety of BS politics at every company. Everybody company you work in as a consultant will have a different type of BS. After a year or two you'll know if you can tolerate that lifestyle.
When I was in consulting, for every trip to insert great city here I did 9 trips to some IT/Finance back office in the suburbs. At one place there was nothing for 15 miles other than a Hampton Inn, a Subway, and a 2 other local stores. So it's not like my off hours were fun either.
I think it's worth it to do it once. When I did it I gained a lot of experience with both technical and soft skills. The soft skills have helped me a lot in my career. You also learn a lot because you get to see how big companies really work and experience the variety of BS politics at every company. Everybody company you work in as a consultant will have a different type of BS. After a year or two you'll know if you can tolerate that lifestyle.
Worked for PWC, DT, EMC (pre-Dell) - great pay, insane hours, no work-life balance - it's all work and a bit of sleep. Fast-track to burn-out.
What nobody seems to mention is that the Big 4 consult to enterprises so you have masses of meetings, "methodology" to follow and the general BS that comes with where PHBs rule. If you enjoy all that and politics then go for it.
Personally I am far happier working as a one-man show. I only take on projects where I can deliver real results on realistic timelines and budgets.
What nobody seems to mention is that the Big 4 consult to enterprises so you have masses of meetings, "methodology" to follow and the general BS that comes with where PHBs rule. If you enjoy all that and politics then go for it.
Personally I am far happier working as a one-man show. I only take on projects where I can deliver real results on realistic timelines and budgets.
>Personally I am far happier working as a one-man show. I only take on projects where I can deliver real results on realistic timelines and budgets.
There is a middle ground between Big 4 and one person consulting. I used to work in the services/consulting org of a decent sized software company that sold data products. We had ~25 consultants in the US and were focused on deployment and light/medium customization. Our selling point was that all consultants were like surgeons and did focused work. We were not a staff augmentation group.
Two great things came from this 1). We didn't have enough people to support multi-year enterprise projects and all the BS that comes with that. If a customer had a big project we'd bring in a partner (e.g. Accenture). 2). Individual consultants could push back on unreasonable asks. For example, more than once I got asked to configure something (e.g. databases, firewalls, etc) that the company I worked for did not sell. I could simply say that I could provide info (e.g. schema recommendations, what ports to open), but the customer had to find somebody else to do it. If you work for a big consulting company the services manager will come in, say we can do it, and things just grow more complex from there as more and more people get dragged into things. Or worse, the services manager leans on you to do something totally out of your expertise because they don't care.
At least 75% of the projects I worked on were reasonably scoped and budgeted. Of course 3 years after I started somebody somewhere decided the consulting team needed to generate more revenue and take on bigger projects.
There is a middle ground between Big 4 and one person consulting. I used to work in the services/consulting org of a decent sized software company that sold data products. We had ~25 consultants in the US and were focused on deployment and light/medium customization. Our selling point was that all consultants were like surgeons and did focused work. We were not a staff augmentation group.
Two great things came from this 1). We didn't have enough people to support multi-year enterprise projects and all the BS that comes with that. If a customer had a big project we'd bring in a partner (e.g. Accenture). 2). Individual consultants could push back on unreasonable asks. For example, more than once I got asked to configure something (e.g. databases, firewalls, etc) that the company I worked for did not sell. I could simply say that I could provide info (e.g. schema recommendations, what ports to open), but the customer had to find somebody else to do it. If you work for a big consulting company the services manager will come in, say we can do it, and things just grow more complex from there as more and more people get dragged into things. Or worse, the services manager leans on you to do something totally out of your expertise because they don't care.
At least 75% of the projects I worked on were reasonably scoped and budgeted. Of course 3 years after I started somebody somewhere decided the consulting team needed to generate more revenue and take on bigger projects.
While I agree with most of the sentiment, it should be noted most companies don’t ‘hyper-focus’ specialization like that.
There are always going to be interacting systems and having knowledge of other systems only helps your job performance.
When scoping for a client, there are many legal concerns at play. The scope, handed from the client, cannot be too specific technically. The concern is, if the systems change(due to firm changes, etc...) or one part of the implemented functionality is turned off (typically a free, or exit fee cost) certain technical verbiage would require contract arbitration and renegotiation.
Maintaince fees are different.
Most firms are paid significantly for the software produced, if they employees are not paid a proportionate amount, that’s the firms problem not the client.
Unreasonable internal scopes are different then client scopes. You just emphasized you worked in a client facing business, I thought it was an interesting topic to discuss.
There are always going to be interacting systems and having knowledge of other systems only helps your job performance.
When scoping for a client, there are many legal concerns at play. The scope, handed from the client, cannot be too specific technically. The concern is, if the systems change(due to firm changes, etc...) or one part of the implemented functionality is turned off (typically a free, or exit fee cost) certain technical verbiage would require contract arbitration and renegotiation.
Maintaince fees are different.
Most firms are paid significantly for the software produced, if they employees are not paid a proportionate amount, that’s the firms problem not the client.
Unreasonable internal scopes are different then client scopes. You just emphasized you worked in a client facing business, I thought it was an interesting topic to discuss.
>While I agree with most of the sentiment, it should be noted most companies don’t ‘hyper-focus’ specialization like that.
There are a lot of on-premise software vendors who are exactly like this. The consulting group exists to deploy, configure, and customize their software. While the consultants may connect and integrate with other systems, it's just a bad idea to start configuring systems from other vendors.
For example, the software we (the company I worked for) sold could pull data from MS SQL. One of our customers had a product from another vendor that stored real-time data in an MS SQL server. Except, it was stored in a funky table structure and the SQL server was installed as part of that product install. It wasn't a standalone SQL server the client installed separately.
The customer asked us to pull data in real-time from that server. After about a day of digging, it was clear the other vendor never intended for data to be pulled from this database and I had a ton of concerns about locks and lost data. So I said they needed to talk to the other vendor about this. As soon as I said "data loss" my management agreed with the decision to not mess with that database. I could certainly talk about our system and what we were trying to do with the other vendor, but we wouldn't touch that SQL server unless they said do.
Consultants at Mulesoft, Talend, and even Cloudera are going to do the same thing. They may pull data from other databases, but the sensible consultants aren't going to start making big changes to a customer's MS SQL server, even if the consultant is highly experienced with that database.
There are a lot of on-premise software vendors who are exactly like this. The consulting group exists to deploy, configure, and customize their software. While the consultants may connect and integrate with other systems, it's just a bad idea to start configuring systems from other vendors.
For example, the software we (the company I worked for) sold could pull data from MS SQL. One of our customers had a product from another vendor that stored real-time data in an MS SQL server. Except, it was stored in a funky table structure and the SQL server was installed as part of that product install. It wasn't a standalone SQL server the client installed separately.
The customer asked us to pull data in real-time from that server. After about a day of digging, it was clear the other vendor never intended for data to be pulled from this database and I had a ton of concerns about locks and lost data. So I said they needed to talk to the other vendor about this. As soon as I said "data loss" my management agreed with the decision to not mess with that database. I could certainly talk about our system and what we were trying to do with the other vendor, but we wouldn't touch that SQL server unless they said do.
Consultants at Mulesoft, Talend, and even Cloudera are going to do the same thing. They may pull data from other databases, but the sensible consultants aren't going to start making big changes to a customer's MS SQL server, even if the consultant is highly experienced with that database.
How did you made the switch to working by yourself?
It took a series of steps. I was an Oracle/DB2 DBA + ERP specialist when working in the big 4 space. I learned networking whilst still using my DBA skills. Worked for a number of systems integrators from which I picked up some direct consulting work and some sub-contract work. These days I focus on product line software engineering and embedded systems, mostly custom IoT design and deployment.
I think that the key to being a successful consultant is to have specialist skills that the larger firms do not have. In my experience, competing with larger firms requires undercutting their rates. Clients who are only interested in paying as little as possible are not my favourites.
I think that the key to being a successful consultant is to have specialist skills that the larger firms do not have. In my experience, competing with larger firms requires undercutting their rates. Clients who are only interested in paying as little as possible are not my favourites.
Have never worked for a big 4 but have interacted a lot with people who do / did work for consultancy firms. Mostly on the management consultancy side, even those placed within IT departments were more "management" than "engineering" (Im not sure if this is what they mean by IT Advisory).
From what I gathered it was long hours, bending to clients, lots of justifying-your-existence style work. Think Powerpoint ninja VS Pivotal labs engineer.
On the flip side, great pay and great career prospects. The latter, beyond a good name in your CV, is due to a well known dynamic where placements are offered permanent roles in the companies they are advising. The firms themselves support this as they know that their ex-employee is more likely to support the firm's business in that and future roles.
From what I gathered it was long hours, bending to clients, lots of justifying-your-existence style work. Think Powerpoint ninja VS Pivotal labs engineer.
On the flip side, great pay and great career prospects. The latter, beyond a good name in your CV, is due to a well known dynamic where placements are offered permanent roles in the companies they are advising. The firms themselves support this as they know that their ex-employee is more likely to support the firm's business in that and future roles.
It’s a stepping stone gig. You are basically selling your life for X years to get a better gig or to move up in that org.
If you are fresh out of school it’s a good deal sometimes. Otherwise, know why you’re selling your soul and have a plan.
If you are fresh out of school it’s a good deal sometimes. Otherwise, know why you’re selling your soul and have a plan.
I work at a Big Four firm doing Software dev. From my experience I would give you a high degree of confidence that you will be on projects interacting with a lot of legacy code, using platforms and software that is outdated and typically a code base that serves business purposes only, so sometimes the code isn’t top notch.
If you are a typical HNer that likes cool stuff like LISP, functional programming, best practices, etc. you will most likely not be getting any exposure to that. Big Corp to big Corp consulting is about the business first and foremost, not your enrichment and learning best coding practices.
If you are a typical HNer that likes cool stuff like LISP, functional programming, best practices, etc. you will most likely not be getting any exposure to that. Big Corp to big Corp consulting is about the business first and foremost, not your enrichment and learning best coding practices.
Especially as an experienced candidate in IT Advisory, what is the work like? Kind of projects? Work-Life/Hours? Salary/Bonus? Career outlook? Would you do it?