Booz Allen Hamilton Reviews

Pros

Always looking to help out you as an employee and better yourself in your career.

Cons

Turnover can be high depending on the contract.

Pros

High pay for junior staff

Cons

Long hours for junior staff

Pros

The fact that Booz has a bench that will still pay you is a huge benefit. You get assigned a Career Manager and depending on who you get they may or may not be good in helping you find your billable project.

Cons

There is no transparency from leadership. Booz isn't able to manage the contracts well and causes the customer to lose trust with the firm. Booz will convince you take a TechEx course which will put you $5k into debt and have to wait 18 month to be debt free. This is their strategy in maintaining their employees as turnover is high at the firm. The salary is way below market average compared to what other companies pay. When you leave a project and go to the bench to find a new project, you're essentially on your own. There is very little help from your CM. You can post on Yammer and apply internally to find your next project.

Pros

- Fair salary - Training budget - Short-term opportunities are endless - Remote laid-back environment

Cons

- Job and duties can change frequently - Timesheets are due daily - Contracts can be just a few days/weeks long - It doesn't matter what you got hired on for. It's your job to stay billable and find work internally - If you aren't at least 50% billable, you are looked at with a microscope until you become 125% billable. Yes, you are expected, in some cases, to be overbooked to ensure 100% billability.

Pros

Everyone I've worked with both on the government and BAH teams have been super nice, reliable, willing to teach, and always glad to cover or step in if needed. It's easy to change roles/fields if you're not feeling challenged or engaged by your current work. I've gone from DoD to DOE to HHS and met so many great people and learned a lot so that's cool. Most contracts have a great WLB and leaders are always available and willing to talk if you have questions or concerns. The SA on my current contract is FANTASTIC, he's demanding but always accommodating and gives great feedback and accepts criticism well.

Cons

It feels like you're punished if you're good at what you do and you're young. This was my first job out of college (22) and I've been here for 4 years. I worked really hard to be billable the entire time (I've been on 3 different contract), I've been engaged on the internal BAH side with account councils and proposals, and I got a M.S. in Cybersecurity M&P but I've had promotions declined and raise requests watered down because I'm a younger employee. My most recent promotion request was denied because in the words of my manager "I was doing such a great job in my new role on a very demanding contract but we just want to see you do it longer!" If I was a 35 year old man would the whole "doing something for longer" have come into play when considering my promotion? Booz wants to shift to a young and hungry tech consulting environment but aren't willing to put younger more ambitious employees in a position to succeed and want to stay at the firm. Not to say they won't use your talents and skills on a contract for a client because they def will but when it comes time to pay/promote you on the internal side your age almost certainly plays a part for whatever reason.

Pros

Overall okay experience. - Network opportunities - upgraded my clearance since I got on a contract where it was a requirement

Cons

-you have to advocate for yourself more than the average. -sometimes you don’t get adequate help or proper training on tasks and projects - some people are not professional or nice - interviewing for internal positions as if you don’t work for the company and cannot be on the bench long. Be in billable work or be terminated -I was on 4 different contracts within a year because Booz would lose contracts left and right so it was hard to get more experience

Pros

- Colleagues with tenure at the company - Genuinely smart people who care about their teams - Big company training and education benefits - Right manager = outstanding career growth and support - Employees are encouraged to be critical and think (in certain roles)

Cons

- For it's size and success, Booz could do better with leave/PTO especially since people work really hard and burnout is real - Not sure what's super innovative about the company though that word is thrown around alot - Company boasts about diversity/DEI a lot but in leadership positions you see mostly white people, but it's good to see so many women - Booz's pay is competitive but not at the top by any means for it to want to compete with the companies in the higher leagues; this is common knowledge - Principals get paid so much money that it's easy/albeit natural for many of them to be really out of touch with the lot of employees under them who do so much work

Pros

Decent place to work. Feels fairly standard. Benefits mostly seem pretty solid, and their lowest tier of healthcare is actually FREE, as in no money out of your paycheck. That's a pretty cool model.

Cons

Requisitions for software take forever. I needed a certain software to do my job and it took ~2 months to get it approved and acquired. As far as 401k matching, they vest their matchings on a year-by-year basis, all at once on the 31st of December. Meaning if you leave on Christmas, pretty much an entire year's worth of matching goes down the tubes. To me, that sounds like a gotcha-tactic to save a couple of figurative pennies and indicates bad faith.. I could work at the place for 20 years and they'd still try to keep up to a year's worth of matching, no matter what. Eventually employees are going to catch on and you'll end up with mass annual exoduses on New Year's day. It's a scummy practice in my opinion. As far as pay, I'm personally paid waay under-market. Asking for a raise doesn't seem to be yielding anything for myself and a few others, so I'm sadly looking elsewhere for competitive pay. Titles seem to be a liiittle bit inflated here as well, but I could be wrong.

Pros

The quality of co-workers at BAH is the best I have known.

Cons

I can't always make positive change when I believe it needs to happen.

Pros

Willing to hire you to work off-site and pay you to wait until you get building clearance and is very patient with issues or getting you on the team. Good benefits, good hours, friendly on-site staff, a lot of resources to move laterally in the company, a good place for networking, and pays well and does it utmost to give you reasons to stay onboard for the long term. Amazing work-life balance that has senior staff telling you to not to overwork yourself because they are cognizant burnout is bad for the long term and employee happiness means they will contribute long term and feel valued.

Cons

Most of the cons are related to the customer and how they make decisions that can adversely affect you while Booz is not necessarily able to control those factors given their status as the contractor that must bend to the needs of the customer. However, I believe this is remedied by the fact Booz will help you in finding new opportunities in the company.