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Rising Star
Depends on the type of consulting. If you're looking at tech consulting, us and AFS eat your lunch in fed in general, especially in the cleared space. If you're looking at non-tech fed consulting, it's more of a mixed bag, with specific niches leaning toward one firm or another. Guidehouse is up there in the running, but they have a much narrower fed focus than we do.
Even with all the volatility of the last 1.5 years, we're still the big dog in the fed space and have our fingers in far more pies than AFS, GPS, and Guidehouse. The breadth of opportunities here in the fed space far outstrips anything that GPS/AFS/Guidehouse offers...but the depth in a particular niche can be pretty variable depending on the niche.
ETA: Exits from BAH depend on the person's profile, but lots of exits to the public sector side of big tech, generally fewer but still plenty of exits to general big tech, lots of people hopping firms inside the Beltway, people going to startups, and of course people going GS, along with a whole mess of non-typical exits as you'd expect from a ~30k person firm.
Thanks for the insight, I know Booz Allen is absolutely colossal. I'm former GH and in the cleared IT GRC space a the moment, but I've had my fingers in plenty of financial statements as well.
I was mostly curious about exits because it's pretty straightforward on the commercial side. Once you get sick of the hours, go work for the client and get a pay bump and better hours. Considering our clientbase, jumping ship to them is generally going to be a non-insignificant pay cut (with far better WLB of course). I'm not sick to death of consulting yet, but it's nice to be able to take a long view.
They’re up there in regards to repute and talent. However, it does depend on the type of public sector work. Accenture is big in tech implementation around the Pentagon, Guidehouse has a lot in DHS and some intel agency pockets, Booz Allen is well known everywhere but has seen crazy volatility in recent years, and honestly it all just matters what you want (reputation, money, stability, or career choice from a big firm with lots of options).
MBB does plenty of public sector work. They just keep quiet about it because they don’t want the public knowing that the Fed and state governments are paying our exorbitant fees.