1. Atmosphere/Culture
The company is run by two people one of whom only works 2 days a week, so you are essentially left with the other who seems to be bipolar and has crazy mood swings - that is between neutral and horrible. He shouts at employees, berates them for the smallest mistakes or simply not doing things his way, even if they had a logical reason. This also happens to more senior staff, not just new joiners. One piece of advice I received from more experienced colleagues when I asked about the shouting was "Just get things right, then he won't shout at you...or at least there is a smaller chance." I think this describes the attitude/culture quite well. If you happen to be disliked by the boss for some reason you might find yourself taken off all projects and not given any work. As you get punished in such ways for mistakes people try to avoid any blame where possible and are quite quick to turn on each other. The office in general is really messy, sheets of paper lie around on the floor and the whole place has a very old feel to it. You can tell that they do not spend money on anything unless they really have to.
2. Work
While it's advertised like it's similar to the big consulting firms, in reality, the tasks are very mundane, mostly admin type of work, looking at websites, trying to get basic information about companies such as the number of their stores, products etc. There is essentially no training provided on anything, you need to learn as you go, and you do that by the rather harsh feedback of the manager. You get close to no authority, you are not allowed to be creative in any way, you are to follow the set-out procedure in every situation. As an example, I witnessed a colleague helping another without being specifically told so, only to be called out and asked if he thinks he is senior enough to decide who works on what project. The company avoids using any BI software (other than Excel) or anything else that would cost money. For instance, people at associate consultant level don't even get to use outlook, you are given a webmail service login to handle your emails.
3. Learning Opportunities
Due to the reasons outlined above, it is difficult to learn a lot. You really have to seek it out, and even then, people are not necessarily helpful. Another factor is that every project is run by the manager of the company and every single decision comes from him. Hence, even people who are responsible for the day-to-day of certain bits don’t really see further than the next step. This has often noticeable consequences on resource management, efficiency and understanding of the task at hand.
4. Hours
You are expected to work very long hours in busy periods (12-16 hours), and even when you have nothing to do all day you will struggle to leave the office before 7-half past 7 without getting questioned on why. You are also not expected to have a lunch break that lasts longer than 15 minutes.
Another telling thing about the company’s attitude towards its people is the Monday morning meeting. It is meant to be a review of where all the projects are, and it starts at 8:30, because work needs to start at 9, so this meeting needs to come out of people’s morning. In a similar way, despite the crazy work hours people get shouted at for being 10 minutes late or get told that they need to move up and down the stairs quicker, because they are wasting too much time.
5. Pay
The salary is nothing to write home about, especially if you would expect it to make up for the long hours and less than ideal working conditions.
6. Staff turnover
Finally, a fun fact, in 2018 30+ people left the business, which is almost impressive for a company of this size (~15-20 employees). In conclusion, unless you want to help them break the world record for most people joining and leaving a company within a couple of months, I would not advise joining SA.