Although Accenture offers many opportunities for professional growth, finding and taking advantage of those opportunities can be challenging. Projects at Accenture tend to be on the longer side. They can be up to a year or more. This makes getting the timing right to pursue an opportunity tricky. Also, employees can get pushback when trying to leave a current client, even between projects, as clients prefer consultants that are familiar with their business and senior management wants appease the client. Compensation at Accenture is also below the industry average and bonuses are even worse (~3 to 14% depending on rating). Also, with performance ratings only occurring once a year there can be a long time between promotions, especially since there are often others with the same qualifications but more seniority awaiting promotion. In addition, raises between promotions are quite small at around 5 to 8% for most and 10% for the top performers. Another downside is that consultants "live" at the client (M-F for local resources and M-Th for out of town). This is wonderful for Accenture as it reduces their cost of maintaining office space for employees but diminishes the sense of community within local offices and can result in longer commutes for local consultants. Local employees mainly choose to live close to their home office but can end up commuting up to an hour or more each way on a local project located outside of the city.
