To those who I know peruse this board, wanting a better life, graduating into the Obamaconomy and accidentally taking jobs in IT consulting...I want to know, who is wishing they could do it all over again, that fateful Senior year when accepting their piddling offer from Deloitte, Accenture, Booz Allen...and become a developer!
My experience in the past 2 years has totally made me reconsider my decision, and I've realized I could be making more money, meeting more connections and really expanding my leadership (going to B school even) by being a developer.
Consulting's a good spot too; just make sure you don't lose the technical skills.
In most careers, you see a progression from hard technical skills to soft people skills. In some ways, you're better positioned than quant developers if you want to stay in technology. 30 years from now, there might not be traders, but there will certainly be IT consultants and CIOs.
Is tech consulting really that bad? I am currently going through interviews for a tech consulting position
I'd certainly take a dev job with a big tech company (i.e. msft, goog, aapl, amzn, etc) or a halfway decent startup over IT consulting.
How is IT consulting view when applying to b-school?
bump
It all depends what you want to do. Yes dev jobs with the big tech jobs pay more but I know I don't want to sit in a corner and write codes all day. Also, IT consulting appears to be less popular than Management Consulting on this forum but I personally would never consider moving to MC if I ever had the opportunity. Even through I don't like to code, my passion is still with technology. With IT consulting, I get to participate in some very interesting technical projects that isn't software development related.
Hey Zerolife, who are you with? We sort of took the same position on IT Consulting and I am curious to find out more but don't have banana points to PM you :|
I'm on the strategy/MC side, but honestly, IT consulting isn't nearly as bad as this forum makes it out to be. A number of my friends work at Accenture/Deloitte/PwC tech etc. and while the work is arguably less interesting and tends to be a little repetitive (if you're mostly doing SAP/Oracle type projects), it's still a good gig.
Most other jobs out there are repetitive - and way less interesting. I think the effort level (for IT consulting) you need to put in also goes down with time (due to the projects being rather similar) - making it less stressful than strategy.
You get similar pay, similar lifestyle and similar career growth (within a firm). Not too shabby if you ask me.
I always got the impression that strategy and management consulting paid better
Perhaps in the long term, I can't say for sure.
However, when I was applying for entry-level positions at Accenture Federal and Booz Allen Hamilton, I was offered anywhere from $10-15k higher than most entry level salaries in the DC Metro area due to the fact that I had an active security clearance.
Ultimate, a major defense contractor offered me a higher salary than either of those consulting firms with much better benefits and hours in a lower cost area so it was a pretty obvious decision.
I only have very limited knowledge but from what I see, that's not true. A friend of mine joined McKinsey around the same time I joined another major IT consulting firm. Our salary is about the same (hers is actually lower but she is also based in a city with lower cost of living).
Also if you check out the reported salary level at glassdoor.com (I find it pretty accurate), the MBB's don't offer high salaries (at least at the Analyst level)
At least at Deloitte, junior staff (across S&O, Human Capital and Tech) have the same salary. Fairly certain it's the same all the way up to partner - not sure about partner comp. It is one big partnership, not separate ones based on service area.
I'm assuming this is related to IT implementation stuff? I do IT strategy and it is AWESOME.
There are 2 types of IT Consulting - IT Technical and IT Management Consulting. IT Management Consulting deals with IT Strategy, Enterprise Architecture, Cost Modeling etc.,
IT Technical deals with ERP implementations, network, etc., IT Technical can get repetitive in the sense that you implement certain specialized packages at different clients or do code conversions etc., There are lots of firms dealing in specialized software. For example, IBM implementation of Cognos.
IT Management Consulting is a very niche line which is not found in many places. McKinsey BTO, PwC CIO Advisory, OW Operations and Technology etc., are some examples.
IT Management Consulting is as awesome as Strategy Consulting given that you get the right projects and you like dealing with technology. I have not dealt with IT Technical Consulting and as a result, cannot express my opinion.
In general, what would the career path of an IT consultant look like? (assuming they stay in it) What is the salary like at the higher-up levels? It seems like a career path that would pigeonhole you, but then again I have no experience in it.
Only answering for IT Management Consulting/IT Strategy and not technical consulting:
It depends again. My previous 2 reporting managers went on to become CIO/CIO equivalent. They were at a Senior Manager/Director level position at the firm. Some stick on to become partners. Some of my friends became Product Managers.
Your career options are therefore of course wide open - CIO or IT M&A or Startups etc
I don't necessarily think being in IT Strategy would hobble you in case of salary. I am not at MBB - so I have no idea how IT is viewed inside but at the Tier 2/Tier 3 firms that I know, it seems to be fairly in line with strategy consulting service lines. Again, I am limited in my knowledge. It's not like partners disclose what they get.
My firm had salary variance between management consulting and IT consulting, IT being lower. IT work also had lower profit margin, so partners had less to take home.
Was your firm working with government clients for IT consulting? If yes, how were the hours?
I think I know which firm you are talking about. The compensation model for partners at that firm is the same across IT and MC. I don't know who told you otherwise to lead you on, but it's a pretty defined compensation model. The metrics to make it do differ because of, as you mentioned, low margin versus high margin work.
The difference I talked about is/was in lower level. Don't know about partners other than margin. IT projects are larger sales though (but not all IT partners sell).
Government IT projects seemed to be 40-50 hour weeks.
Those hours are what I would have assumed. One would be working similar hours to the client and we know that government workers (for the most part) have very good hours.
Jason Bourne would disagree with you.
At my firm, typically all partners sell. We do have specialists but they tend to remain as MDs/Directors. I talked to a partner about this conversation in the morning who has hopped across multiple firms. He said there is no difference in the pay grade at the lower levels or even at the Manager levels.
Again, there needs to be an emphasis on what we are talking about here. You wouldn't call in MBB to implement your ERP systems. There is a wrong perception in minds of people regarding what IT Consulting means.
1) You have to discern between IT Implementation Consulting and IT Strategy Consulting. I'm in Strategy. I have a business background and can't even do VBA on Excel; i have never touched anything incredibly technical in my job so far. I've helped with Marketing Strategy, Predictive Analytics, and Retail Forecasting.
2) Salaries are similar in entry level, but MBB pays a lot more on the higher levels. Then again...why are you thinking that far ahead? Crazy fools; i bet you didn't even know this field existed 3 years ago.
3) IT is cool in the right areas. The innovation is crazy, the ability to reduce city traffic by 60% or to give sales reps real-time tools to model their own scenarios for clients is cool. Clearly there's a bias on this forum, and that's fine. I'm certainly not saying what I do is better than MBB...but my stuff is pretty freaking cool.
4) IT Consulting in b-school really depends on your firm. Deloitte's BTA program can get you into Harvard, Wharton, etc. if you kill your app.
5) Everything IlliniProgrammer said here (and says in general) is true.
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