Depends on where you work in Accenture. Were you in the strategy or management consulting practices?

If you are in Accenture tech, then of course JPM is better.

I dont think there is any glamour in consulting. Is there? That perception is probably formed by people not in consulting. Once you get into it, you will realize most of the time your job is really quite terrible and stressful. Nothing glamourous.

Interesting strategy work is no longer found in consulting. Think about it. Big players like MBB advise a lot of F500 companies. Do you honestly reckon that these companies would be comfortable sharing everything about their competitive strategies? There’s actually nothing stopping these consultancies from using this information to help a rival (which is actually one of the selling points of consulting - but it is dying as mentioned above). Projects these days are mostly to do with tech transformation (MBB are now focusing less on their strategy business and are instead growing their digital ones).

My opinion:

MBB > Tier 2 strat house (OW S& ATK LEK RB - probably in that order from APAC perspective) > Banking tech > All other consulting (Big 4, boutiques)

1. In MBB/Tier 2, you will probably do a ~60/40 mix of strategy:transformation engagements (give or take 10% based on firm, industry, and region). Unless you want to delve deep into technology, you're still going to be more marketable to general commercial positions in 3-5 years time.

2. Yes, corporations are increasingly sophisticated and they have internal strategy / consulting units to do some of the work. However, management / c-suites somehow still leverage consultants for select opportunities, and many will want the rubber stamp from consulting firms.

3. On practical terms, as a full-time employee, you're probably better off in a tier 1/2 strategy house in terms of remuneration and exit options in the short to medium term. Banks are not going to pay in-house tech talent >10K in 3 years post-undergrad, which is what the tier1/2 consulting firms pay. You can then decide to leave after that, get a 10-20% pay bump in industry and work your way up from mid-mgr level.

where does Accenture stand?

Don’t think OP’s offer is from a tier 2 (eg. OW, Kearney). Not sure if it’s worth sacrificing the WLB for it.

His post is about strategy consulting firms. Accenture is known for technology consulting/implementation services. Accenture has a strategy division but the brand name isnt really recognized on par with tier1 or 2 strategy firms yet.

In terms of tech consulting and implementation, think of firms which are doing the same as Accenture. Are they close to the scale (eg. Global reach, global revenue, no. Of employees) that Accenture has?

Really appreciate the inputs everyone! I've decided to go into banking tech as I'll be working on cloud infrastructure - hopefully avoiding having to deal with legacy systems. Like many have pointed out, I probably don't want to contend with the poor WLB associated with the higher pay, plus I think there's value in gaining more technical experience earlier in my career.

It's a tough one.

From a career standpoint, as a junior, unless you're in the strategy consulting team (with a differentiated pay scale compared to their mgmt consulting arm), you're probably going to be on the same trajectory as a banking tech guy. On average 3 years to 6k, 6 years to 9k monthly gross pay. I understand from an external market perspective, they did a recent consolidation between the 2 units - strategy and mgmt consulting - but apparently their compensation structures are still differentiated.

However, as a partner / MD in ACN's case, it's a good deal because they deal in mega transformation projects. Many juniors want to be in sexy strategy short term 3-month projects, and that's fine because its interesting and market pays relatively well. But as you move up in seniority, partners want more stable revenues with less BD effort and hence prefer to sell large scale long-term transformation projects.

From a market recognition standpoint, ACN's main strength is in digital / tech, not in Strategy. If you want to rank it based on pay, ACN strategy pays 10-20% less than OW / ATK at junior levels, and similar to RB. Any other unit in ACN pays significantly less than all the tier-2s. Prestige ranking is subjective, and very dependent on region, so probably won't lay it all out here.

Nope. ACN S&C don’t pay 10-20% less than Tier 2. Firms like Kearney & OW pay from 6-7.5k ish and when they merged to 2 units, the starting pay for analyst is at arnd 4.8k base.