Pros
As a consulting firm, BCG is little other than its people, and its people are amazing. It is my privilege to lead them in helping our clients to solve their most difficult issues. Every BCGer can give me a perspective I didn't have before and this forces me to push myself as hard as I can to give something back to them. They can be tough to manage since they size you up pretty quickly and don't give you their respect just because of the title - you've got to earn it. That challenge keeps me sharp. Beyond the consulting staff, I have to hand it to our business services staff (BST). Admins, IT, travel, staffing - all of them are responsive and service oriented. I can get done through them in an hour what would have taken me a day in the average company. IT is especially good. Left your laptop on an airplane? No problem - IT will overnight a new one to you with all your data restored so you never skip a beat. In what is a stressful job, these folks do what they can to make our operations not one of your concerns. They're good at what they do. Comp is known to be good. Benefits are stellar. Promotion speeds are unheard of if you've ever worked a regular company. A lot of that could be said about BCGs top competitors though. What sets us apart is how involved all levels of the firm are in solving our clients problems, treating each one as unique. Do we leverage what we've learned from experience - of course, but we're always looking for the differences rather than force fitting a generic solution. I've been impressed with how much even the Senior Partners engage on content at sometimes the lowest levels when the "devil is in the details." It doesn't always make for the cleanest process, but at the end of the day it gets us to the best answer.
Cons
Intellectual leadership isn't there like it used to be. Again, I think this criticism could be launched at the top 3 consulting firms, but BCG in particular, hung its hat of path breaking concepts in the 70s and that's just not there anymore. Consulting really drove the intellectual agenda of management then, pulling academia in its wake. Not sure any business school or economics professors will be calling up partners to get new insights nowadays. Along the same lines, I worry about the generalist model. Only so much can be taught in two years at business school and, unlike the medical profession, there is no obligation to continue to learn the latest evidence based research, or even theories for that matter. So few do. As business disciplines continue to bend to the scientific research process (finance went first, now parts of marketing are starting), MBAs will be left saying only the most general of platitudes. Do we still add value, you bet. But perhaps not on the pure "intellectual" part - more so on solving political log jams, organization hurdles, synthesis of all the pieces parts. As great as the people are, they (and I'm of course generalizing here) can get a bit detached from the average Joe and that sometimes manifests itself in off putting ways e.g. whining about issues people would die to have elsewhere. Really gets under my skin to hear my colleagues play into the prima donna stereotype. That's us at our worst moments. Yes, work/life balance is tough in consulting but I don't think it's out of whack with other professional jobs - law, investment banking, etc. I'm convinced the labor market has its own efficient frontier of sorts in the tradeoff between money/achievement and work/life balance. You can't have the good of consulting without the bad. We wouldn't be what we are if we worked half the time. The mix it brings is not right for everyone or for all times in your life/career. Ok - enough for now. I really need to get back to work. These decks aren't going to write themselves! :-)