Good place to kick start your career but not for long term
Pros
- Pay is higher than most firms/companies, especially for fresh graduates. - Plenty of things to learn, if you are open to it. - Most seniors and managers are approachable and very willing to coach. Maybe there are some bad apples, but personally I am happy with my team. - Hybrid and flexible working arrangement, especially during the big holiday seasons. - Opportunity to work with overseas offices. - If you are performing beyond the standard and show that you are capable to lead, the opportunity to progress or be promoted is there. Communicate regularly with your managers to know if you are on the right track.
Cons
- Ridiculous and unrealistic KPIs. - There's no such thing as work life balance and ending work on time. Some even need to work on public holidays. Even the so called FlexFriday (work half day on the second week of Friday) is only eligible for those who do not have urgent work. How about those who supports territories which always have urgent work/not enough people? I personally don't remember the last time I took a FlexFriday. - Poor resource management. Pulling people from other teams when they are occupied with the work from their original territory/service. Do not have enough resources but keep on accepting work from Practice Offices. The Associates/Senior Associates are struggling and working overtime almost everyday. Very unhealthy, physically and mentally. A good way to push people to resign. - The good employees are 'punished' with more work, while the poor performing ones can off work on time and no repercussions received for their lack of effort/responsibilities. Sure, they will receive bad performance review but that's only towards the end of year and only affects their increment/bonus. - The billable hours target is a joke. In a day, we do not only dedicate our 8-9 hours for the 'billable' work. We need to check emails, attend non-client meetings, trainings, self learning which are all considered 'non-billable'. We still need to take short breaks in between because we are not robots who can work straight long hours. So overtime is unavoidable if we want to achieve the said target. Again, not healthy. - Once your seniors, managers and above do not like you, consider your career with the company ends. Some of them do not give you work because they deem you are underperforming, then you will not have a ground to redeem yourself. At the end of the day, you are 'forced' to resign.
