- Make no mistake, this is a sales organization. Promotion paths after a certain level are all about sales. Being a good engineer isn't really a career path and in many ways it's a dead end position.
- Lack of truly competent people, almost every project I was on was a disorganized mess with people who had no idea what they were doing and were improperly trained and educated. A huge emphasis on training but it was very low quality. Just checking boxes for clients. In my opinion, most of the consultant roles are filled with industry rejects who would love (but cannot) get a job at any decent tech company. No one has a formal degree or education. This is an offshoring company/staff augmentation firm, not really true consulting.
- The global delivery network is usually incompetent. Overseas devs will chop anything useful you write to pieces in order to accomplish nebulous client goals. India was the worst offender, sadly confirming stereotypes. Never trust them with anything important. You will spend lots of time cleaning up spaghetti nonsense. Hilariously enough this work ends up in modern infrastructure projects and important areas like oil and gas. They throw lots of bodies at the problem but are 10 years behind modern development practices. Some individuals are very good, but they are diamonds in the rough.
- Low salary for the area, 20-40% lower than anywhere else for similar work/stress levels. You're not paid by the hour, but salaried. In theory this sounds good but it amounts to working for $20/hour usually as work life balance is poor.
- Basically Accenture owned and operated, almost all business comes from them and they call the shots in most cases. Accenture projects are also the worst in terms of work life balance. They run the show and Avanade is just along for the ride.
- Slow and sometimes impossible promotion path, not a place for motivated individuals.
- Extremely process driven to a fault. Independent thoughts and actions are discouraged. You follow the playbook, no questions asked.