Avanade reviews

The list is long and very depressing. Extremely political toxic environment whereby you need to continue looking your back. People are not treated respectfully and it’s all about power alliances and buddy system. Genuine honest professional employees have no respect. Work life balance is very less, need to keep a watch if you are hitting the bench. If you hit the bench & are there for more than three weeks at a stretch then assume you need to go find a new job quickly. Also please watch out for gossip about you behind your back. There are people who have condescending nature, rude, inappropriate behavior towards people of color & comment about people’s appearances and opine that they dislike them. HR and leadership boasts about D&I ... however it is completely lacking in practice. Lack of trust both ways is a major deficiency that anyone will notice in this company which once upon a time was good in it... no more. The Big4 parent company culture is extremely damaging. There’s more to some real incidents that I did not witness first hand but have credible sources that have confirmed that people are not treated respectfully. Can’t say more to that as you need to stay away from bad behavior. Sales people are free to sell anything that is not realistic and it ends up to be the Consulting Team headache to deliver the project somehow by late working hours & sacrificing weekends. Expectations of clients and employees are not maintained and honored. At the end culture is extremely toxic.

Unfortunately, the positives of Avanade cannot outweigh the fact that most of the company's assignments are terrible. I use the term "assignment" rather than "project" because most of the work is not even project-based. Much of Avanade's work is filling roles within Accenture accounts, or even staff aug for Avanade's own clients. True to consulting, the sales folks do not care if the work is something that will keep consultants engaged or happy, or help consultants advance their careers. Most assignments are far from leading edge. If the client likes you, it's possible to get stuck on such a dead-end assignment for years! If you are lucky enough to get on a direct Avanade engagement (i.e. not owned by Accenture), then your chance at a promotion will increase significantly. However, you will also get to experience Avanade's terrible project delivery. Account managers have little to do with the delivery side, and thus there is often a giant disconnect between expectations and what is actually delivered. The heavy travel requirements may be a negative to some, but I actually very much enjoyed that aspect of the job, especially the free vacations that can be had with the many airline and hotel points. However, being away from home 4 days a week is certainly not for everyone. Career managers are hit or miss. My own career manager was actually quite good, but most are not so lucky. At the end of the day, though, while your career manager can be essential to advocate for you during the yearly review, they really have very little influence on your daily work or your job satisfaction. Compensation is below industry average.