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Pros/Cons of Working at Big R&D Consulting Firm?
pagalvin asks: "I'm being recruited for an 'R&D Architect' position at a Big 4 consulting firm in the U.S.
Does the community care to share its experience working as 'overhead' in a large organization that is most famous for its consultants working 60 hour weeks and billing 'til the fat lady sings? In such places, do non-billable R&D types get any respect? Is there a a long-term career path that sticks with the technology track?"
Yes, no, and yes.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
and other stuff like that that needs to be done.
My father was R&D at Texas Instruments back when I was a kid and TI was hot and all that. He brought me into his lab once and they had liquid nitrogen and helium and oxygen faucets! How cool is that?!
From my experience, the ones who aren't billable are the ones who get cut first.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
The Pros:
Get paid for doing nothing.
The Cons:
Everyone else in the computing industry knows you're a total fraud getting paid to do nothing.
For some people it is a dream job.
My last corporate job was with an R&D position at a major telco. When things were going well respect was high and so were the perks, however when things werent going so well the pressure was on, it was like they felt that 12 hours days and increased on-call duties would make us suddenly overcome problems caused by red tape and over-zealous marketing clowns than actual hardware and software problems. In the end when budget cuts and layoffs came, the engineers were the first to go while the managers and marketing team stayed on, service suffered the existing product became harder and harder for the lower level engineers to support and eventually the entire service was dropped. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat! Would I stick around again as long as I did? Hell No!
I learned in my 5 years there than I have in any other position, it was challenging and personally rewarding, looked impressive on a resume. Besides the cool tech stuff I learned, I learned to pay close attention to what is going on outside the job at hand. Pay attention to what customers are being told, or what they tell you they are being told. Cover your ass, if something isnt going to work, speak up even if you worry it will cost you your job since if your right and let it go eventually it will cost you your job anyway. Endurance and Dedication are admirable traits in a human being but are usually taken for granted in a corporate enviroment. Putting in the extra hours once in a while is great but do it to often and it will become expected of you. The way most companies see it your reward for hard work is getting to have a job the next day, remember that and any kudos that come your way after success will be unexpected surprises. Get out while you still enjoy it, if you keep going until burnout you will find yourself unmotivated to get back into that arena again.
You will have a higher risk of being cut since your work is not core to the business. You will be both admired and hated by the non-R&D folks. You will work on cool stuff and have lots of fun. You'll likely have lower pay and advancement opportunities since your compensation is getting to work on cool stuff and having lots of fun. You will have a higher chance of using Nerf(TM) toys at work. You probably don't have a girlfriend. You will have a conversation about Sci-Fi at least once a week. You will feel that you would be more appreciated and arguably at lower risk (other than company viability...) if you work for a small startup tech company rather than doing R&D in the IT universe.
:-)
The important thing is to follow your heart and do what you are passionate about. If you do that, everything else you want will likely follow. Well, maybe not the girlfriend...
Which sounds the most like you?
a) I like to do things right the first time
b) I like to dive right in with a trial solution, then continuously improve that solution until it becomes best of breed
c) If the customer says it works for him/her, then that's good enough for me.
d) If the customer says it works for him/her, we should sell them on our premium service offerings, which are interesting because they generate higher fees.
If you chose (a), you might not be well suited for a consulting firm.
If you chose (b), there might be a fit, but it remains to be seen.
If you chose (c), you're probably a good fit.
If you chose (d), take the job immediately.
I have a personal aversion to the bullshit at consulting firms. The pressure to generate revenue the brutal social Darwinism, the massive hours just to show your face and the fact that after all that it's bootlickers and sociopaths who get ahead. The only thing worse than a consulting firm is one of those Market Research firms like Gartner or Yankee group. They used to give people personal valets because they didn't want them to EVER leave work. Not ever. May they all sexually service mythological beasts in hell, all of them.
If you're going to last, you'll need to communicate the cool stuff from R&D to the billable consultants in a way they find useful. If you don't want to spend half your time talking about the cool stuff you do in R&D, then don't bother. Go work in R&D at Microsoft or Google or Apple where they actually translate the R&D into products in the marketplace.
What does an R&D Architect do? Is it a technology consulting firm we are talking about or management consulting?
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See this as a jumping point to a smaller company where you WILL get respect. In the big 4, you aren't focusing on technology. Our R&D are more focused on industry issues, rather than technology. Some of our largest apps still use .Net 1.0. And we have no need to go 2.0. Basically, do it for the pay, do it for the experience. Then move on. It takes a certain type of person to work for a big 4. It is your life. Are you ready for it?
..and I have the million dollar salary and all the perks you can imagine go with the role.
Put simply the hours you put in are part of the journey to get to this position. Its actually a fairly simple journey if you have the basic endeavor, work ethic and determination to succeed. It will take some years.. deal with this...as clients look for "time on earth" as a simple measure of accumulated experience which is often what you are selling them. If you regard such a journey as "blood sucking" and have a "take" attitude towards employment then I suggest you are wasting your time. But please don't complain in future years if others appear more successful or perceive they have had an "easy ride" in their journey.
Long hours are not about "face time"...they are generally about a small team being focused on an end goal to meet a clients generally unrealistic time expectations. In a competitive market it is a fact that firms win work by promising shorter turn-around time and unfortunately personal time can be impacted. This is however rarely the "normal" or standard approach to work.
While client rainmakers are obviously very important, R&D type people can be very well respected in Big 4 firms. But respect is gathered for results / outputs not inputs (ie hours in office). Unfortunately hours often lead to better output unless you are a genius.
There is a fairly popular conspiracy theory that Microsoft Research exists to take the best & brightest research minds off the street, denying them to other companies and startups that might threaten Microsoft.
Like all conspiracy theories, this cannot be confirmed :-) It can be falsified, if/when we see results from MSR appearing in Microsoft products.
Caveat: lack of falsification does not mean it is confirmed. Intending to get products from a research group does not mean you will get successful technology transfer. Otherwise we would have seen Xerox making ass loads of money from windowing workstations, local area networks, and laser printers :-)
Curious as it may seem, historically the best method for technology transfer is for innovators to leave the organization and found a startup, let the free market determine whether it was a good idea, and then buy back the successful companies. If this was not actually the case, then large $$$ research labs like MSR, and IBM and AT&T research before them, would have crushed the venture capital/startup business. Building an organizational structure that supports and nurtures innovation turns out to be very difficult.
I worked at a tech startup directly funded by one of the "Big 5" consulting firms. That was bubble time and it feels like the cycle is repeating today. A culture of billable hours sucks away your soul, causes people to produce piles of documentation more than actually build stuff (building stuff is risky; that can provably not work). You'll get engineering travesties like architects who aren't the implementers. Life is short. Don't do it.