Comment by _tik_
4 years ago
Andersen Consulting/Accenture is my first job. Accenture directly sends me to the client after finishing my orientation program and 2-3 days of training. On my first day arrived at the client side for some initial discussion. I saw everyone standing with anxious faces and suddenly everyone spontaneously laughing. On lunch time, the client told me this was their first time engaging a big consultant firm and they did not expect a kid.
Consultants and agencies typically give all of the actual work to young 22-28 year olds. Leadership focuses on acquiring new business. Once they get your business they really do not care what happens beyond generally fulfilling the contracted requirements.
"Orientation program?" Did they not send you to CAPS in St. Charles?
When I joined Accenture, also as my first IT job out of college, we did training in a hotel room just of i35 in Austin.
I had never touched Java before, we did C at college, and became a Java developer after 3 days holed up with 10 other people doing coding challenges on a laptop.
I didn't get to go to any of the training centers until I'd been there for a year.
Ah. Well, believe it or not, Andersen's six-week programming boot camp in St. Charles was still in COBOL... in the '90s. That was mainly because their biggest customers were government and industry firms running huge legacy systems. Think Raytheon, McDonnell-Douglass, Hershey.
Eventually they did switch to C. I wonder what the curriculum is today.
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St Charles. This brings back memories. I fly in at like 9pm and there is nothing open to eat, at all. Only one slice of leftover pizza at the "social centre", and it did taste like cardboard.
Ever go to Scotland Yard? The one bar in town. Some CLMs (career-limiting moves) took place there (not perpetrated by me).
kid/no kid is one thing, but were you able to deliver the insights they expected? I know I'd be pissed if I paid a high rate expecting an expert and then got a guy who doesn't know either.
A 22-yr old kid? I don't care how many future presidents you rubbed shoulders with at Yale, the answer is NO.