Cons:
1) Long hours: Consistently clocked >70 hrs/ week. Though weekends are protected, Sat is spent recovering/ grocery/ laundry and then by Sun eve--you are packing for an early AM flight on Monday. This makes you question the money you are making. If you making 1.7x the market rate, you are sorta working 1.5-1.8x hours as well.
2) Middle management (Senior Project Leaders/ Principals): Not everyone in middle management is a great people developer. I once worked for a senior Principal who would constantly fret about his promotion and how if he doesn't become a Partner soon, he'll have to leave. That made for a terrible case experience as he was so insecure and made everyone work long hours (unnecessarily) to deliver "value"
3) Up-or-out policy: BCG is aggressively pursuing the up-or-out policy. Every year size of incoming class gets bigger, but people start leaving after 12-14 months. All you need is 1-2 bad case experiences for the firm to make up its mind and force you to leave. This policy makes sense superficially, but it assumes that everyone develops at the same pace. At the same time, you do not need to be exceptionally smart to have a long career at BCG. BCG has a very peculiar work culture/ process, some people are able to adapt and some don't. If you have some industry/ real-life work experience, it may hinder your success at BCG as you may feel we are not answering the right questions or our work lacks technical detail. Most "successful" consultants at BCG joined the firm right out of undergrad and only have consulting expertise.
