Great place to learn technical knowledge, poor if you are looking for a career
Pros
If you look for it, you can get a tremendous exposure to some pretty cool technology coming out of Microsoft. In addition, some of the industry knowledge and processes from Accenture provide a firm foundation for understanding what is going on at your clients. On the technical side of the house there are some great people. They really know how to implement Microsoft technologies to provide innovative solutions to business issues, when allowed by Avanade's internal workings. Technical training is another great reason for a real techie to work here. The reason Avanade ranks high with regard to training is because of the availability of self study courses that you can take advantage of.
Cons
Avanade's internal processes are probably the worst I have seen in more decades of working then I want to admit. It seems as if the only answer to any issue is strap on another process developed by someone detached from the client facing, revenue generating side of the business. Processes rarely are retired, just added to. Numerous clients have been quoted as compared to Avanade their own processes look positively good. (Many of these were government clients) Advancement is an issue at Avanade, if you are in one of the larger offices you seem to do ok. However Avanade prides itself on its virtual work environment, however those who do most of their work virtually suffer in advancement. Just another disconnect at the highest levels. Avanade is primarily owned by Accenture and it can be an issue. While Accenture successfully pursues most very large projects, Avanade focuses on much, much smaller gigs. Unfortunately the push from management is to adopt the same policies and procedures Accenture uses in multi-million dollar pursuits for Avanadeâ??s hundreds of thousands and smaller pursuits. To address this, you guessed it, Avanade straps on a process to "lower" the overhead, but it actually takes at least as much time and effort to get management to sign off. Another way Accenture dominates the work is that there is considerable staff augmentation where Avanade people provide the Microsoft skills on an Accenture project and we seem to be at their mercy as to what we are allowed to do. Often we complain about our treatment on engagements but it is not paid much heed. The culture is also very risk adverse. This tends to drive up estimates and we lose a lot of business because we over estimate, over hedge our bets, over use legal language and over plan in the effort to minimize risk to Avanade. This often presents itself in proposals that are much more than what the client was thinking the wanted and were willing to pay for. A lot of business is lost here after copious amounts of work. Conceptually this is to reduce the risk of a project not meeting Avanade's expectations; unfortunately it is really due to a poor project management capability even though there are some pretty good project management methodologies and estimating models available to the project teams. Unfortunately the delivery side (project/program management people) rule what does get approved for sale and the Sales side is very weak as far as influencing how we pursue revenue. Also. as others have noted, all bets are off if the unrealisticly high goals set by fiannce and management are not being met. At that point expect to be sent on anything that may bring in a fast buck.
