My life in Accenture before startups • Hacker News Board

Re: My life in Accenture before startups

#101

Post by dp1234 » Thu, Jun 09, 2011, 9:48 PM UTC

hugh3 wrote: post #67

binarymax wrote: post #3

I can vouch for this. I never worked for any of the big 4, but worked with them on many occasions, when I was a consultant with a much smaller firm ( 200 when I left). Consulting really is a great way to learn the ins and outs of business while earning a good salary and getting to travel. Combine it with writing lots of code and its a fantastic real-world education for a multitude of endeavors.

When you put it that way, it sounds exciting. Sometimes I wish the world had forced me to go and do other things in between my undergrad and my PhD. Once you're on an academic career track it's hard to take a few years off to do something else.

Also once you are on an industry career track, it's hard to convince yourself to take time off to get a PhD.

Re: My life in Accenture before startups

#102

Post by coreyo » Thu, Jun 09, 2011, 10:50 PM UTC

Duff wrote: post #90

brendino wrote: post #58

As a current Analyst (1 year out of college now) at Accenture, I have a few points to add: Positives: - Accenture greatly helps develop one's people skills and networking skills which can help prepare you for a startup. Building these skills in college is difficult, so jumping into a professional setting right after college helps. - The work enables you to understand real-world problems that clients are facing, so yo…

Is it just me, or do all of the ex- or current Accenture people posting here sound like Amway salesmen or cult members.

Being part of a large organization, the organization gives you the answer. It may or may not totally work for you, but you working for a profit-making MACHINE. Successful companies learn to indoctrinate(willing) their employees. A good employee at any company should be able to rattle of why they are there and what the companies believes in. The only difference for a corporation is that there are a lot of people using the same answer :)

Re: My life in Accenture before startups

#103

Post by coreyo » Thu, Jun 09, 2011, 10:52 PM UTC

sfard wrote: post #98

Seriously, since when is Accenture considered Prestigious? It's not even a top consulting shop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinsey_%26_Company#Competitor...

Management consulting is very different than technology consulting. Accenture, IBM, Deloitte, CapGemini: these are the kind of firms that compete against each other for enterprise tech projects.

Re: My life in Accenture before startups

#104

Post by coreyo » Thu, Jun 09, 2011, 10:56 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #77

brendino wrote: post #58

As a current Analyst (1 year out of college now) at Accenture, I have a few points to add: Positives: - Accenture greatly helps develop one's people skills and networking skills which can help prepare you for a startup. Building these skills in college is difficult, so jumping into a professional setting right after college helps. - The work enables you to understand real-world problems that clients are facing, so yo…

- Change is slow in enterprise software. Unlike a startup where you can think of a new feature and implement it in a day, it can take months or years to go from inception to roll-out for a new feature or innovation. There are so many stakeholders that must be satisfied, and so much red tape to break. These restricitions can stifle your personal creativity. Not unique to Accenture.

And a huge reason is risk, scale and performance.

There was a good article linked on HC that was full of quotes from founders who were acquired. The difference between a startup experimenting with a new feature and a corporation is that if you F up it only affects a small number of people. For a corporation, an error could be millions of people affects and tens or hundreds of millions of dollars lost.

Re: My life in Accenture before startups

#105

Post by ryanhuff » Thu, Jun 09, 2011, 11:28 PM UTC

swombat wrote: post #75

gamble wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about subcontractors. Most consultancies, including Accenture in my limited personal experience with them, staff up with new hires (preferably cheap new grads) whenever they get a new contract. When business slows down enough that people are lingering on the bench, they get fired. They are essentially high-end temp agencies.

Nope. When business gets slow, they fire the experienced people, who are much more expensive to keep around idle.

True. That is the "up or out" model at work. The few that survive such attrition are partner material, meaning they can put up with the lifestyle, enjoy the role of digging through other peoples business, and have potential as sales people.

Re: My life in Accenture before startups

#106

Post by jbrechtel » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 12:57 AM UTC

fbnt wrote: post #36

I left Accenture (Italy) this january, after 3 years, and just like you I was hired right after graduation thanks to my 'mad' java skills, after about 1 year I wasn't writing much code anymore and SQL, Word & Excel became my only daily companions. Negatives/things I didn't like during my experience in Accenture : - Working 10-14 hours a day (^). If you were to leave at 6pm your supervisor would joke about it ("hey, d…

Just for anyone wondering, not all consultancies operate this way. I've been at ThoughtWorks for 2 years now and it's nothing like this. It's quite literally the opposite on every negative point mentioned above.

Re: My life in Accenture before startups

#107

Post by Aramgutang » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 12:59 AM UTC

drtse4 wrote: post #52

oscardelben wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Can you elaborate on review & print code ?

His HN comments collection: http://edweissman.com/53640595 , search for "bed".

tl;dr: He likes to review his code and make notes on printouts in bed.

Re: My life in Accenture before startups

#108

Post by jbrechtel » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 1:02 AM UTC

mason55 wrote: post #76

cubicle67 wrote: post #40

I spent a number of years working as an employee of one of the big IT outsourcers on a Australian government department (better not say which one) contract. During this time I was required to assist a team from Accenture who had won a contract to write some software that needed to be integrated with a number of systems. Accenture had "all their best people" on the job. This meant almost an entire floor of staff; mana…

> Accenture had "all their best people" on the job. This meant almost an entire floor of staff; managers, project managers, BAs, god knows what else. Oh, they also had two young devs, you know, to actually do the work. As a dev/architect in Professional Services (not at a big 5 consulting firm), this is way off the mark. PMs and BAs do a ton of work that I either would not want to do or am not good at and while the e…

I totally agree that non-coders contribute mightily to a project...especially good BAs. However, if there were really only two developers (which is admittedly unclear from the description) then it sounds like the staffing was absurdly out of whack. Unless this is a tiny floor and we're talking one PM and BA for the two devs....

Re: My life in Accenture before startups

#109

Post by Aramgutang » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 1:02 AM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #27

My typical day working for a Big 5 firm: 7:00 - drive to client in Redlands 8:00 - arrive in Redlands 8:42 - client arrives for 8:00 meeting 8:51 - client leaves for emergency 8:52 - review project with programmer - still 18 months behind 9:15 - daily email to 6 bosses about dire status 9:38 - take call from boss #4 - debate "strategic direction" 10:20 - coffee, snack, & bitch session with lead programmer 10:45 - dri…

  10:00 - go to daily status meeting
  10:12 - everyone else arrives at daily status meeting
   2:00 - go to Special Planning Session for Project #127
   2:12 - others arrive at Special Planning Session for Project #127
   4:00 - go to daily stand-up meeting for project status
   4:08 - others arrive at daily stand-up meeting for project status

If you know everyone else is going to be reliably late to a meeting, why show up on time and waste 32 minutes?

Re: My life in Accenture before startups

#110

Post by jbrechtel » Fri, Jun 10, 2011, 1:10 AM UTC

bengl3rt wrote: post #72

I've looked into consulting as a potential career, not with a behemoth like Accenture, but with smaller more specialized boutique shops (Art & Logic) or mid-size ones (Thoughtworks). All I really want is a wide array of domain experience in different verticals, and travel to lots of different places. However, everyone I've interacted with has painted the services business as a cruel and hierarchical (and underpaid) p…

I'd be surprised if you heard about ThoughtWorks' professional services as cruel, hierarchical and underpaid.

I imagine we're more the source of the 'so disorganized they never even get back to you' part, right? If so, I apologize for that. If you really did just get dropped by recruiting then shoot me an email and I can rouse the right people.