Vantaggi
Small, intimate firm environment. Leadership will adjust on some levels to the needs of their people. Firm tries to be transparent as much as possible - good learning experience. Quirky, extremely intelligent people. Generally "nice" or thoughtful people. Core competencies often focus on "nice" things like empathy, pride, leadership, communication. A valiant attempt to merge the "soft" organizational focus with a "hard" quantitative and/or strategic capability. Because our firm is "different", many of our projects seem or feel slightly "different" - not just blindly applying frameworks, so lots of flexibility in problem solving and the consulting experience. Firm members work "nicely" with clients and clients tend to like us as people. Lots of development-focused feedback on performance. Staffing team is also a champion for your personal development. Entrepreneurial spirit still exists to some extent - there is freedom to participate in "extracurriculars". It is a challenging job in an extremely uncertain time.
Svantaggi
Somewhat uncertain firm value proposition and strategy in terms of the type of work we want to provide. Partnership has tried to define what they want the firm to be, but it seems to be a continuous problem. A bit of a rift in the firm in culture, strategy, and working style, starting at the partnership level. Smaller firm means a less secure pipeline of work in an uncertain economy. Uncertainty yields discomfort in the ranks in terms of job security and opportunities at the firm going forward. Smaller firm also means there is a very strong "informal network" of gossip and info flow (and political positioning to some extent). Not a great example of how to create work life balance norms. Since every project feels so important to the future of the firm, there is not much impetus to create work life balance. People just dive in and try to over-deliver. In a cost cutting time, "one firm" ideal goes to the wayside as geographies isolate.