“The only choice you have is whether you choose to work in exchange for a salary.” – Avanade HR, 2019
Chargeability comes above all else; employees are just a number and their individual career aspirations ultimately don’t matter.
Negative feedback toward project experiences is a recurring theme in employee engagement feedback.
Consultants have almost no say in where they are assigned. They can be thrown into any role regardless of whether they are skilled, interested, or looking to grow/gain new skills. Non-technical people writing PowerShell scripts and data scientists pigeonholed in their previous roles. Me, well I explicitly asked not to do a specific type of role, so guess what I did back-to-back?
You can’t be naïve thinking you can just roll off when you get bored. In one project, I worked with the same screens for years and I had to beg for mercy to escape. It’s not uncommon to find Avanade consultants who have remained in the same client for 3 years, 5 years or even more.
IT projects can be ground-breaking and innovative. They can have a genuine social impact. This just wasn’t my experience across projects.
It’s near impossible to get promoted nowadays and the bar is being raised higher each year. Being exceptional in your day job isn’t enough; it’s ultra-competitive and only those who take on significant extracurricular activities have any chance to succeed. I write from personal experience: I was one of the successful ones.
