Vantaggi
Just a quick note after reading some of the other reviews on glassdoor: it seems to be very polarised (one way or the other), so I've tried my best to give a balanced opinion and be honest about both the good and the bad. I can truly say that I've enjoyed and benefitted from my time here, but I should therefore also be honest that I fall into the "stereotypical Newton consultant type" that is mentioned by some other reviews, and so am likely unable to relate to some of the experiences shared by others. I also hear some quite valid criticisms in some of the negative reviews, and have tried to cover all those I personally see in the cons section. Some of the reviews seems a little overblown (e.g: people suggesting that there is a quota for how many people pass probation or that only 50% of people pass it - both of these things are miles away from reality), but there are also clearly some reviews on here that are just directors posting a 5-star rating with no real content to push the average up, so hopefully the overall result is a fair balance. Pros summary: fantastic, curious colleagues; all-in company culture; lots of development opportunities and responsibilty early on (you'll be stretched); good pay and benefits; fast progression. I've enjoyed my 4 years here, and while I'm soon leaving, I would recommend anyone to give this place a go, if purely for the range of people you meet, problems you get to tackle, and development opportunities. 1. The people: far and away my favourite thing about Newton is the wide range of caring, smart, ambitious people you get to work with. Due to the nature of the work (project based, where you will often be in a team of 5-10 consultants on client site for months at a time), one of the characteristics candidates are screened for is how easy they are to get along with. It's clear to see this in action, and means that often your team end up being similar to an extended family during long projects. I also get the impression (even after 4 years) that everyone is genuinely trying to do right by the client. Finally, people here are switched on; it can be a bit intimidating at times, but once you get past that initial feeling of imposter syndrome, it is one of the best parts of the job, because you end up learning so much from those around you. 2. The guarantee: consulting comes with its fair share of stigma (rightly so). Newton certainly isn't free from those stigmas. However, most projects sold are done so with a guarantee of savings, meaning that Newton's fee is contigent on actually proving that the client is making money from the programme - it's like "no win no fee" for consultants. I love this, because it means that you don't go into organisations, write a report and then leave. You actually have to stick around, get to know the company and the people who work there, and get through the tough times together. In terms of providing purpose for the work you do, it's a very motivating concept. 3. Development: as an operational consultancy, Newton's main product is ultimately its employees, rather than a particular product. Therefore, they're incentivised to develop your skillset as quickly as possible. This leads to the company feedback culture (which I mention separately below), but also to the way they treat responsibility and delegation of work, i.e: they're happy to throw you in the deep end. Personally, I love this part of the job - you get chucked into so many situations where you have to rapidly learn about something new (technology/industry/software/methodology) and then get to put it in practice, rather than purely learning in a classroom and then applying it (that happens too, when appropriate). I've found that I developed so much quicker than I thought I could in a variety of areas (management, prioritisation, communication, problem solving), particularly in my first 2 years here, thanks to this approach. To be totally transparent, this approach can be tough and lead to a lot of work at times, but if you accept this and are willing to take it on, I'd recommend it to anyone looking to develop quickly. 4. Diversity of work: it's unusual for projects to last longer than a year (and they will often be 3-6 months), so you end up bouncing around different industries and clients over your first 2 years. I've personally been lucky enough to work in a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, fast food, fitness, and social care. This results in a broad range in the type of problems you end up solving, which can help narrow down what your personal preference is. 5. Feedback culture: a two-sided coin, so here's the good, and I mention the bad in the cons section. As mentioned above, Newton's product is its people. Therefore, feedback is given/received regularly (typically you'd sit down with your line manager/managee weekly), and you should have good visibility of your peformance at all times (see the cons section for my thoughts on when this doesn't work so well, related to managers). This leads to a collaborative culture where, in the best case, people are able to naturally and frequently share their thoughts with each other and offer ways to improve. As with some other factors, this takes some getting used to, and certainly isn't the way everyone likes to operate. However, if you dive headfirst into this approach to feedback, you can benefit greatly from regularly being guided on what you're excelling at and what you can do better. It is worth noting that giving constructive feedback is a skill in itself, and unfortunately quite often the focus on regular feedback leads to people either giving it for the sake of it or giving unactionable, vague comments. I expand a bit on this in the cons. 6. Company culture: I've put my thoughts on the negative side of the culture in the cons section, but for now the good stuff! Everyone is committed (people here don't do things in halves) to whatever they do (whether internal events, societies, fun nights etc), super friendly to new starters, and has a "just get it done" kind of attitude. This propagates through the rest of the company and gives you the feeling that you can get achieve anything if you set your mind to it. Newton also goes above and beyond the typical employer in keeping the culture positive. Examples would be "review days" every second Friday (a day where you get together with either your team, your section of the company or the whole company for an offsite day to workshop your biggest challenges and have some social time together) and "N-weekends" (6 weekends a year which vary each year but include things like skiing and hiking and are subsidised by the company). 7. Pay and benefits: simple, you get paid pretty well. Within 4 years of starting my professional career out of uni, my pay breached £75k/year when including 6-monthly profit share. While there are places and industries that will pay more, you're certainly near the top of the spectrum on a national scale (though you do work hard for it). You also get a company car and a private health care allowance (for the health care, this is after your first promotion, which typically happens ~2 years in). 8. No weekend work: you have to work a lot, but to be fair to Newton they are strict about maintaining no weekend work. Of course, you can if you choose to, but few people will do so, and it is actively discouraged. I've seen some other reviews on here stating otherwise, so clearly it does happen more than advertised, but from my personal experience of 4 years here, I've only worked three times at the weekend, and was supported by my manager on those occasions, plus given time off in leui on one of those occasions. It's possible that I've just been lucky, but from discussion with some of my peers their experiences seem to match pretty well to mine - this might just be selection bias due to talking to people who are still at the company after a long time and so have probably had broadly positive experiences. 9. No promotion quotas/periods: there are promotions every month, rather than once/twice a year like at some similar companies, and there are no promotion "limits" (i.e: you don't need to wait for someone to leave a role to then take their role). This is enabled by Newton's continual growth over the past 20 years - naturally, this could one day stop, but it seems healthy for the timebeing. When I hear of my friends at other consultancies waiting for the next opportunity to apply for promotion, or narrowly missing their current one, I'm grateful that Newton's approach is much more flexible. Only criticism would be that most promotions are closely linked to a particular amount of time at each grade, and the variation from that is rarely more than 1/2 months either side. I think this can slightly disincentivise certain individuals who are really trying to progress quickly.
Svantaggi
Cons summary: high workload; sometimes antisocial travel/location requirements; vertically-biased progression pathways leading to inconsistent management quality; small-company culture; poor experienced hire integration. 1. Lifestyle (travel, hours, diet): you spend a lot of time on site, which means travel (not the romantic kind; typically local councils and factories aren't located in tourist hotspots) and living out of hotels/air bnbs. This impacts your diet, since you will often end up eating out or ordering takeaways, and your personal life, since it can be pretty tough if you live with a partner/have kids/want to regularly see friends during the week. This is all often exacerbated by a high workload, which can result in regular evening work (in addition to core working hours of 0800-1800). However, this all varies a lot depending on the project you're on, your team, and the phase of the project. At worst, it can be 70-hour weeks in an industrial estate premier inn eating takeaway every night and feeling like your entire life is work. At best, it can be 45/50-hour weeks in a touristy town or central London, where you have a great team, get to go out for tasty, paid-for dinners every night, have regular fun nights and generally are loving life. Typically, it will fall somewhere in the middle of those two options, but a good team helps the situation in either case. This lifestyle can have huge ups and downs, but I do find that for me it flows into my weekends regularly, since I usually require a bit of decompression after an intense work week away from home, and don't love living out of a suitcase. To be transparent, this travel aspect gets better as you get more senior, but it rarely fully disappears, and the hours will always be quite long. 2. Progression pathways and management: mostly vertical pathways mean that almost everyone who gets promoted starts managing others. If you're someone who loves the hands-on aspect of delivery, this can be a tough transition (and might remove the part of the job you most enjoy). I also don't think that Newton does a good enough job in training people to manage before giving them that responsibility; while I'm a fan of learning by doing, I don't think that approach is fair from the point of view of the managee. I have unfortunately seen (and myself been guilty of) too much mis-management from inexperienced managers who were great at delivery, but have no idea how to run a team or deliver open and honest feedback. Sometimes people will give feedback for the sake of it, and other times it will be delivered with very little empathy or emotional intelligence. By no means is it an easy thing to deliver feedback well, but in a company which encourages such regular feedback, I think we could do a better job of training people in this area. 3. Company culture: Newton is no longer a small company (currently upwards of 600 people, and continuing to grow), but sometimes still seems to have a small-company culture. There are certainly some positives to this (closeness with peers, ability to be flexible, ability to drive high-impact internal change if you're bloodyminded enough, to name a few), but there are also some negatives. Firstly, it can lead to too much reliance on people to go above and beyond their usual scope to get things done if they are "non-essential". This can put you into a tough situation if you're passionate about something that is benefitting the company, but find that suddenly you are working all your evenings on that thing because you have no other time. It also means some initiatives just stop when individuals are on holiday/more intense projects. I understand this for totally extracurricular aspects of the job, but it can occasionally bleed into processes that become critical to the company and I can't always understand why someone isn't hired/given the time to dedicate to the activity. Secondly, the company can feel pretty cult-ish in how intense it gets. Some of this is fantastic, but the "work hard play hard" mentality can on occasion put people off if they aren't so sure of themselves or equally keen on the activity, plus it can come across as quite old-fashioned. I don't drink alcohol, and have often felt a little outside the bubble as a result, despite generally being friendly with everyone. The "party hard" mentality has also certainly led to some inappropriate behaviours, which seem totally avoidable. The company does seem to be responding to this and making changes, but I sometimes am not sure if they are doing enough - there's still an open bar almost every two weeks. 4. Senior management disconnect: majority are fantastic, but some are quite out of touch with the more junior consulting body. Sometimes, this is surprising because they themselves have come through the consulting body. This can lead to directors making overpromises to clients that then result in an unsustainable workload for the junior team and generally put them off consulting forever. As mentioned, I do think this is the exception, rather than the rule, but I have seen on more than one occassion. The proposed solution to this high workload is sometimes to miss out on the many social events that happen, which makes their purpose/value less clear. 5. High turnover: not sure this is a technically a con, just want to be honest about it so that you're not under any illusions. Lots of people leave, and plenty of people get fired. On the flipside, more people get hired so the company continues to grow. On the firing point, as mentioned on a few occasions already, Newton's main product is its people, and people get given a lot of responsibility quickly. Therefore, it's very clear to see if someone is underperforming. When the project team is less than 15 (or often 10) people in size, this can make a big impact on the overall project. So, understandably, support gets wrapped around the person struggling quite quickly, and then they either adapt to make it work for both themselves and Newton, or they don't and are let go. This sounds like an emotionless consultant thing to say (and fair enough, it probably is), but Newton as a company would not survive long if it didn't have a good mechanism for this. Sometimes I really dislike that aspect of working here (especially when it involves people I know/care about), and I think that most people quickly become numd to it, but it would be disingenuous to pretend it wasn't a reality and you should enter the job with an understanding that it is. Consulting is also definitely not suited for everyone, and sometimes it takes trying it to realise that. On the people leaving point, it happens for a bunch of reasons: less travel, better work/life balance, specialisation in a particular field/industry, starting your own company. The high attrition rate is expected and keeps the company growth at a sustainable rate. It's also worth noting that it's quite common for people to leave Newton and return within a couple of years; take from that what you will. 6. Poor experienced hire integration: as a grad, I didn't personally feel much pain from this, but I saw it for quite a few colleagues, including some former managers that I was close with. Newton has a way of working, and unfortunately isn't great at making the most of people's skillsets if they don't align with the existing approach. There are exceptions to this (people who land and absolutely smash it), but they are genuinely exceptions. Newton needs to get way better at this to have any chance of continuing to thrive at the rate it wants to.