Working for the toxic Deloitte environment was really traumatic for me and many of my colleagues. It took a long time to get over that weekly Sunday depression that kicked in from me dreading having to go back into the office on Mondays. As part of the great resignation class of 2020, I salute those who jumped from that chaotic environment and into industry roles while living their wildest professional dreams. For all those looking to join Deloitte as a potential employer, look elsewhere.

I’m sorry to hear about your experience and am glad you’re in a happier position now. But I’d be cautious about offering such vast generalizations about an org as large as Deloitte, with countless different sectors, accounts, and project teams. I fully recognize that some accounts/teams are as toxic as what you described — but not all are.

Personally, I’ve had a wonderful experience at D and it has been the best workplace I’ve encountered so far. I’m on the GPS side, so that might help things. But that reinforces my point — Deloitte is so huge that experiences vary wildly. If you’re going to share your feedback, at least pinpoint which part of the firm gave you such a bad time.

Author SM has just as much a right to voice their side of the story as you have SM2.

Sorry to say this, but it no longer becomes a joke, when a job leads to life & death consequences. So I really don't give a damn about green dot media PR or purpose bullshit as far as my life & my well-being is concerned. Deloitte leadership is all about brushing things under the carpet. Generalization, oh yes, if it means it saves somebody else's life, then a hundred times yes. Such generalizations are great for human health.

Seen SM wars at Deloitte & prayed to God to stay away from using me as a pawn in the game against each other and not compare apples to oranges in project initiatives to bring each other down & hit other SMs below the belt.

As stories come out in open from former and current employees, maybe these conclusions won't look so distant & generalized to you after all.

The anonymous reporting lines suck at Deloitte.
There is nothing confidential or unbiased about them.

The prize of peace & price of career from so called "career limiting moves" as they say in Uncle D.

At Deloitte, I had a project where I would daydream about getting hit by a car on my walk to 30 Rock.

No exaggeration - I have very few good things to say about that place. Also roughly 2.5x my income at S& a year later compared to there….

Heard it summed up well by someone who knew the market - “Deloitte - everyone on the outside wants to get in, everyone on the inside wants to get out”

Thanks for sharing your experience and providing a safe warning to outsiders to do some digging on their team before joining.

My tenure at Deloitte was a disaster from the start and its largely due to the firm having no leadership. See the pandemic hitting when I got emails from Joe/Janet, Dan H, head of OP, head of sub-offering, office consulting lead partner and lastly my account(s) lead partners with the same non-substantive email. Then we spent 3 months in 2020 laying people off and leaving staff to wonder if today is the day they were going to lose their job.

But for more personal examples of what I saw and encountered, heres a bit more meat. I had 2 incidents of people I did not work with or know (never even spoke to 1) who decided to trash my name to multiple PMD. First did it because I was a threat to their claim as the firms “expert” on a topic. The 2nd did it because they led a massive proposal I was supposed to support but it was off track and they needed a fall person (my work was on phase 2 of proposal and I would only get involved if we cleared phase 1). Leadership did nothing about either incident and on the 2nd one I filed an HR complaint because my ability to do my job was impacted by random PMD micro managing me. HR investigated, found I was right then told my coach I needed to be punished for having put the complaint in. My coach talked them out of flagging me as BCLP (Deloitte version of a PIP) because they had just finished year end reviews which said I was a strong performer. And when I presented my C for promotion to SC, with partner support and him being in what was sold as an SC role, I was shocked to hear the unprofessional comments from the PMD on the panel who decided the projects he was staffed on werent of value to the practice so he should instead be flagged as BCLP. Multiple people on the call were pinging me in shock at what they were hearing.

So yes I met a lot of good, smart people there. I am smart enough to disassociate people from the firm issues. But this place is chaos and in serious need of a face lift, starting with major leadership and structural changes. A lot of cut throat, crazy people trying to make PMD combined with PMD who got there and just dont care about anyone but themselves.

Super toxic, agreed with OP. Don't feel the support needed to thrive especially from leaders. Most of the "we support you" is fluff. Sure, a lot of people will be on projects which they won't feel this, but when it comes down to it all leaders care about is money and delivering even if that requires additional scope just to keep the client happy, which in turn adds additional work and stress to your resources

I've had a great experience at Deloitte and continue to after many years. Im sorry you had a bad experience.

I could have written a lot of this as well. I could tell right away it was horrible, but I kept telling myself "I can make this work!" Turned out I couldn't. Great to have on my resume, though. Making a lot more $ now.

Finally someone is speaking up. When I first started feeling this way, everyone else at Deloitte just responded with “this is what it is” “You need to prove yourself” which never made sense to me.
I already proved myself, I got into Deloitte. Why am I still being treated like I’m less? Why are some people so entitled and manipulative?

Don’t understand the hate that D gets. If it’s the WLB, then well that’s what you get when you sign up as a consultant plus wlb isn’t really different among the big 4 firms.

Can you share more specific details please? I quit because my experience there traumatized me, but I keep thinking maybe I wasn’t good enough lol.

Went from strategy& to Deloitte and honestly there’s not much difference across big4 strategy

It’s such a big firm, I had a bad experience too. I wish they’d correct of a lot of the simple items rather than hiding behind that.

I left for a 45% bump in 2021 and relationships with people I care about intact.

I’m down 35lbs and generally have a better quality of life where I don’t touch my computer or work phone on the weekends.

I’m grateful for my time there because it taught me what I shouldn’t take as acceptable for WLB, boundaries, or my personal health.

Do you feel comfortable sharing which region and function you were part of? As a human capital consultant I can tell you that a “company culture” for a company of over 300k people just doesn’t exist. There are immense differences between different geographies, functions, sectors etc. I, like many of my colleagues, love my team and have a fantastic manager - most supportive environment I’ve worked in thus far. It’s great to share feedback but I think with companies so large you need to be more specific to be helpful.

Hahaha, OP, don’t be ridiculous to glamorize industry roles. You should know from working in projects how chaotic our clients are, if you don’t, you are in for a surprise. Good luck!

Wow sorry you had such a poor experience. I work in USDC GPS and my wlb is amazing.

I hear that, from a fellow SM. I am on deck for MD, but honestly can’t wait to leave uncle D. It’s been hell.

Oh look - Deloitte again! https://joinfishbowl.com/post_thov9bhie9