Horrible work/life balance and aggressive performance management - Associate Boston Consulting Group Employee Review

The work-life balance is simply unsustainable—60-70 hour weeks are standard. No matter how much the firm claims to care about sustainability, the expectation is that you’ll always be available. The culture is extremely political. Who you align with internally can be just as important, if not more, than the quality of your work. Promotions, staffing decisions, and feedback often feel more about playing the game than actual merit. If you don’t have the right internal advocates, good luck moving up. The constant travel is another issue. Even in situations where remote work would be just as effective, there’s an outdated expectation to travel to “colocate” with teams. It’s exhausting and unnecessary, and it adds an extra layer of stress to an already demanding job. Worst of all is the performance management process. Feedback is often vague, contradictory, and, at times, completely arbitrary. It can feel like decisions about your trajectory have already been made before reviews even happen. Gaslighting is not an exaggeration—one week, you might hear that you’re exceeding expectations, and the next, you’re suddenly “underperforming” with little explanation.