Pluspunten
Accenture has a long list of clients so you get exposure to many different sectors both in industry and government. Accenture offers great benefits, empasis on training and career development and has a vast professional workforce and makes a great effort to embrace diversity.
Minpunten
Accenture only recently started hiring "experinced hires" and as an experienced hire I found it hard to get accustomed to the deeply entrenched corporate mentality of many employees who were hired straight out of college and have been only with Accenture all their work life. Getting them to see and think differently about things can be a challenge. It sometimes has a cultish feel to those of us arriving later. As already stated by many there is no work life balance and they expect you to work really long hours and good luck trying to take advantage of the generous 5 week PTO. In my five years at Accenture I have only managed to take an average of 2 weeks each year and you can only carry over 240 hours to the next fiscal year so the generous vacation package is not so generous in practice. I find there is a certain level of cliquishness particularly with those that have been with the company for a long time and this has an impact come promotion time. Many Senior Managers are mainly focused on getting promoted to Senior Executive so they neglect the day to day functions. Though Accenture touts "Best People" as one of it's core values I do not think they make the effort to keep the best people once they are on board. I have seen many a talent walk out the door for better paying jobs and there is no effort to try and retain this talent even though recruting and training of new hires to replace the departures costs more than it would take to pay them a more competent wage. The emphasis on billiable hours and utilization percentages is also a downer.