Pros
Avanade is a fantastic company filled with really great, really fun, really brilliant people. It's not the sort of place you can hide, do as little as possible and collect a paycheck. It's a wonderful place to work if you're passionate about technology and enjoy other people who are passionate about technology. Some projects are brutal (CRAZY long hours, abusive clients, unreasonable deadlines, etc) but I always walk away from a brutal project feeling like I've grown the most. And when you're on a brutal project, management recognizes it and works hard to make it easier (extra bench time at the end, praise in the middle, typical to get promoted at the end of an exceptionally bad project if you continued to perform well, etc). I personally love the travel aspect of it, getting to fly into new cities and getting to know new people and new technologies. I am constantly blown away at how brilliant all my co-workers are, and continually impressed with the leadership of the company. Management goes out of their way to treat us well and to make sure our experience at Avanade is good. They treat us like we're the customer because they know that if they treat us well and we're happy, then we treat the customer well and make the customer happy.
Cons
If you want to make as much money as possible for doing as little work as possible, Avanade is not your place. If you want to have some really great life experiences and travel and work hard shoulder to shoulder with some of the smartest people you've ever met, Avanade is your place. Oh, and if you're an alcoholic Avanade isn't a great place because we tend to blow off steam at drinking events...a lot. That's pretty universal on projects coast to coast, and it's probably consulting in general not Avanade specifically. You need to know how to pace yourself with alcohol if you want to be a consultant.
