Premiere MSFT Technologies Services Provider - You'll Get Out Of It What You Put Into It
Pros
Avanade is a top-tier consulting services provider that offers the best of both Microsoft's and Accenture's services organizations strengths. For its customer facing technology consultants and delivery managers it provides never a dull moment, challenging and rewarding work assignments. As a year-over-year global growth organization there are plentiful opportunities for individual growth based on one's capabilities. One should only be limited at Avanade by what one is willing to put into their career - in my experience a real "meritocracy." If one wishes to gain exposure to cutting edge Microsoft technologies implemented at the largest Fortune level organizations then this is the place. Very compressed experience - for example, 5 years at Avanade is equivalent to 10 years of typical corporate experience. Excellent salary, bonuses and benefits including top of the line health insurance, 80 hours of required annual training time and a technology purchase "extended benefits" budget of up to $2K provided annually. Excellent training and best in class individual professional development support provided from entry level through junior, senior and executive level positions.
Cons
Top tier IT services consulting is challenging and not for the faint of heart. It takes absolute dedication and willingness to constantly compete in a stable of thoroughbreds to succeed at this level - especially at Avanade. Experiences will vary over time and across projects and customer cultures but often significant personal sacrifices are required including near constant travel; demanding schedules like nights, weekends, getting up at 4:30 am on Sundays to fly across the country and getting back home at 9 pm or later on Fridays for months on end. I've worked away on the road through more (and at home through major holidays) birthdays and family milestone occasions than I can recount. Also Avanade in my view has become bloated around unnecessary and excessive layers of process, policy and internal oversight organizations seemingly needing to justify their existence through regularly implementing, changing and re-implementing Byzantine layers of reviews, approvals, added costs to customers and hoops to be jumped through leading to an inability to be agile around supporting innovative and new business development pursuits and opportunities. These constantly increasing layers of processes spill over into other areas including performance review and delivery of customer projects. Top technical talent are routinely tapped for opaque internal roles developing assets and technology offerings in isolation and often of questionable real value rather than supporting the business where more needed at the major account and customer level.
