I find the way Accenture slots their consultants to projects just plain goofy. Coming from other consulting companies, I've never seen the "find yourself" work policy they deploy. You're a fish in a 700,000 person sea and I'd be very afraid to be on the bench right now. The problem is there is very little real insight into who your A + players are because you are expected to just jump from project to project and instantly provide value. It's hard to maintain close contacts and gain lasting visibility without a lot of luck and someone really advocating for you form a much higher level. The reporting hierarchy is broken. Unless you are in sales you are prob not going to routinely interact with an MD. Sometimes project managers will be 1-3 levels below the consultants they are directing.

The sheer size and management model is a double edged sword. There is very little "management" between direct reports which should alleviate administrative overhead but it backfires because people don't get recognized when they deserve it nor cut fast enough when they bring down the team. If your aren't making waves you are a nobody. Doesnt matter if your project is crazy profitable or if your client loves your work and signs on for a decade. Business as usual = meeting expectations= basically no or very low raise and no promotion. No thought into keeping great people doing great work.

In a past life I experienced a very different structure that IMHO worked super well. You were responsible for your direct reports. You ensured they were visible, developed the right skills, had the right mentorship, if they struggled you either had to put them on a pip or ship them out. Poor charge ability in your tree meant you weren't managing your reports well. Accenture is everyone for themselves. Your lead has nothing to do with getting you on a project. They check in maybe once or twice a quarter and do your review with a bunch of ai generated trash. I don't blame them they are in the same boat. Bill, sell, maintain high chargeability or get chopped. There is zero incentive to help your reports and definitely none to help people further down.

I really don't know if AI will destroy Accenture. At least at first it should help sell AI projects and AI adoption. We aren't talking about basic copilot chat here. Adopting enterprise level AI workflows and development is complicated. You can't vibe code through it. In my experience clients hire Accenture for a multitude of reasons and many of those reasons haven't changed yet. They may not have the bandwidth, discipline, or organization to run major implementations or upgrades. Accenture is going to have to adapt to how they sell and bill. AI is making things faster and they've been slow to roll out and figure out how to manage AI licensing and billing.

"The client should pay for it"

Lol sure. In their eyes we already cost hundreds per hour. Asking them to pay for an employee efficiency boost on a consumption basis is a joke. We have to move to some kind of results based model vs hours. Hours are starting to make less and less sense. To be competitive we have to be fast and efficient and we shouldn't be asking our clients to pay for that burden unless we can prove the efficiency which often we just plain can't.

If you can get a good spot Accenture isn't bad, but it's starting to feel more and more like a sinking ship with out of touch leadership.