Glorified Contractor (Stay away from the NYC Office)
Pros
NYC office is pretty small, so you get to know everyone. Most of the consultants and senior consultants are friendly and personable.
Cons
They claim to be advisory consultants providing strategic work for clients but majority of the projects are BAU work or work that the client does not want to hire a FT employee for. You are also most likely placed on a project that does not fit with your skills or expertise and be asked to do a lot. You do not have a say in the projects you want to build your career. You are more a glorified contractor than anything else. Most of the lead consultants and junior managers are not technically smart. When you look towards them for advice or gain expertise in the subject matter at hand, they have the same amount as experience as you. They get promoted based on favoritism, office politics or just know how to sell than on subject matter/expertise. Lack of transparency from senior management about projects. Currently right now, there is about one third of the office on the bench and senior management keeps saying project is coming from but they have been saying for months now. Senior Management keeps the office in the dark about what is going on behind the scenes. The review process is non transparent at all. First, you fill out your review highlighting your accomplishment etc.... Second, you ask feedback from your team members and the client. One those are complete your performance shares the feedback with you and what they going to say at a round table discussion with senior management. At the round table discussions, they talk about your work etc and then place you on scale where you get promoted etc.. but that process in of itself is shady because its subjective and you are not aware of your score. Recently, the company has been laying off/firing people and blaming it on poor performance. Most of the employees are blindsided by this decision because they get positive feedback from clients and peers and their utilization rate is good. They did not get a performance improvement plan, they were not aware their performance was below standard or notice before getting canned. HR gave them a that a senior management made the decision highly unethical business practices. Finally, if you're a person of color or a women, there is high probability you will not get promoted. I have been there for two promotion cycles and seen so many minorities, who do the right thing (great performance, high utilization, attend all the social events etc..) but get over looked for promotion for those who know the right senior managers, play office politics or know how to sell business. I think they prefer people who can sell business than hard workers or technically smart. Also if you are person of color or woman, you are on very short leash, if you make a mistake or something senior management deemed wrong, you most likely to get to fired compare to others. DHG has a whole are pushing a Diversity and Inclusion initiatives but clearly the NYC's senior managers, managers and lead consultant lack it especially on how they treat minorities and what they write in their reviews.