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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
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?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Your mother will keep expecting to see the buildings you designed.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
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?
The only thing I can say about the big N is that I've worked with some extremely good alumni, most of whom got out within three years. At that point the conditioning starts to set in. There was some French sociologist (if anyone knows the name give me a heads-up) who did a study and concluded that they arent that different to religious cults.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm not sure it's worth that kind of time commitment just for a million bucks a year. But, on the other hand, I have to agree with your points. They are the same reasons that I'm successful, and they mostly match my sentiments.
The hardest working people are the ones that make the most financial success. My dad was a janitor when I was a little kid. He worked harder than anyone I've ever met. He is now (20 or 30 years later) more financially successful then you and me put together.
Hard work gets you there. It's no mystery to me. What is a mystery to me is that so many other people never figure that out.
My goal is to surpass that success, with lots of work, and then to try and catch myself at some point before it overrules the second half of my life too. I'll hire help. It'll get me there easier than it did for him.
sure you need to work to have money to enjoy life, but their comes a point where you really didn't need to work that whole weekend.
while it is true many successful people are hard working, i've found none of them are very happy with their life.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
That "hard work" spiel is an incomplete recipe for success. Hard work plus business acumen plus a whole lot of luck is what *might* make you successful. The single mom holding down three jobs is working damn hard but do you think there's a million dollar salary waiting for her down the road?
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