* No work life balance. You won't work banker hours regularly (60-80 hour weeks), but as an associate, you should expect to work 50 or more hours per week and often more. You should expect to be on call.
* Volatility. Speaking of being on call, if you are on some cases, you will come to work and not be sure what time you are leaving as clients and managers will give you projects that need to be done yesterday with little or no notice. You will be expected to keep your phone with you at all times and be responsive on weekends, holiday, evenings, and even vacations (if you want to go on vacation, I recommend going somewhere with no cell service and no internet access)
* Given the volatility and hours, you may do better in terms of compensation and opportunity working in analytics, management consulting, or research. Analytics jobs pay pretty well and have a lot of room for advancement. In management consulting and research, you make a lot of outside connections that help you jump to a better job. At AG, you meet some faculty members who might be able to find you a job if they remember your name, a bunch of lawyers, and very few people tied to firms. Almost all of your connections will be specific to economic consulting. You will literally make better connections at bars than by working at AG.
* Difficult to transition to another job. If AG doesn't work for you, try to get out early. Most people have no clue what AG is. I know several former managers and VPs who had a tough time selling their experience at AG and it took them a long time to find a new job even though they had years of success in economics consulting.
* Training Double Standard - Analysts, who are hired for 2-4 years and then leave, are assigned both a mentor and an adviser. They receive a great deal of training and associates and managers are expected to offer informal advice. Analysts typically have a budget to spend on happy hours and other activities to keep the analysts happy. Associates, who are, in theory, partner track employees? You can and should go through all of the analyst training, but good luck getting good management training. Many analysts on this site complain about how associates have no clue. Of course they don't. Most come straight out of graduate programs, but are expected to take over work streams even though some have never had a job before.
* Many VPs and a lot of Partners simply are not invested in their office. It's not atypical for some partners to avoid all HR, office management, and office morale responsibilities. Some partners are more likely to work from home than they are to come to the office.
* You as an associate and manager, will likely feel pressured or be expected to help with HR (recruiting, interviewing, etc.), office management, and office morale, even though you are swamped. Sometimes, you will be rewarded for these efforts, but your compensation is more tied to your billable hours than your non-billable work.
* Bonus doesn't often reflect what you put into the hours you work. One year, I had 80% utilization. The next year? I had nearly 100% utilization. My compensation went up by roughly 8%. Had I known that, I would have tried to find a way to work less.
* Culture of non-confrontation/passive aggression. After your first year, you only have a formal review ever year. It's entirely possible that this will be the only time that you get solid feedback unless you ask for it. If a superior doesn't like working with you for some reason? It's more likely that the superior will find a way to not work with you rather than talk to you about what you should be doing to improve. People expect you to figure it out. Other economic consulting firms do a better job of training and help you know what the it is that you're supposed to be figuring out.
