This has been one of the longest weeks I've had in the workplace since back in 2000 when I was still at Scient. This is my second week on this project and the third week overall for the project, so I was expecting things to still be moving pretty slowly, but I was 100% wrong about that. It turns out that this project is only going to be 8 weeks long in total, so we're nearing the halfway point and we've been cranking like possible to make that end-of-July deadline. So far, I've had workdays that ran from 6:30am (the time I left for the airport on Monday) to 11:00pm, 8:00am to 11:30pm, and 8:30am to 8:30pm and I never really got much rest this past weekend, so I've been running on fumes all week long. I'm heading back to NYC tonight, so this won't be one of those long work nights, but it wouldn't surprise me if I end up doing some work when I get home tonight. I still don't know what they're going to put me on when this project ends, but i hope it'll be something based in NYC so I'll be able to have the NYC summer experience and start wylin' out like I've heard that a lot of my classmates are doing on a daily basis.
Although the grind has been hella hectic so far, I've really been enjoying it because I'm getting to do work that is totally new to me and I feel like I'm an important part of this team. Thinking back to my last year or two of work before business school, this internship experience is a night-and-day difference from that. In my old job, I felt like I'd been stagnant for a while because I was just plugging away at Java code on the same project that I'd been on from the time I started at my most recent employer. I would just come into the office and see the same old code and wonder when I'd ever get a chance to see another type of work. This experience is totally different...it feels like there is always something new each day. Whether it is participating in a brainstorming session about potential customer segments for our client to pursue, helping my manager do a competitive analysis, or working on the beginning stages of a capability gap analysis (which is my main focus for this project), I'm actually getting to do work that I'll learn from and I'm also using the lessons that I learned in school this year. This consulting game is definitely an arena where I can see myself for the first few years after graduation, if not longer.
I don't think I've given a rundown of my team yet, so here it is...the team is made up of:
- 2 Sr. Managers: one that is in charge of the strategy portion of the client initiative (8 yrs at ACN) and one that is in charge of the entire overarching client initiative that has other projects that will follow ours (15 yrs at ACN)
- 2 Managers: one that is in charge of managing the pieces work that will make up our final client solution (8 yrs at ACN) and one that is in charge of an analysis of who a company acquired by our client can get integrated into the overall effort (2 months at ACN)
- 2 Analysts: one from the Financial Services industry group that is our subject matter expert in that vertical (1.5 yrs at ACN) and one that is working on a competitve landscape assessment for the client (2 yrs at ACN)
There is a pretty wide range of backgrounds, interests, and personalities on the team, but they're all pretty cool cats and we have been working very well together. Plus, I've been hitting them with damn near every possible question that can be asked about what it is like to work here full-time and they never get tired of giving me answers. The Sr. Manager in charge of the strategy project (Andy - my direct boss) and the financial services Analyst (Chris) have been especially helpful with giving me information about working here and they've been very candid, which is greatly appreciated because I'll have some major choices to make in the next couple of months. The best part of being on this team is that everyone's opinion matters, no matter how much total work experience and tenure at Accenture you have at this point. This may seem like a small thing, but it definitely wasn't like that at the two companies where I worked. At those companies, I always felt like my input carried little weight and, in turn, my advancement opportunities were limited in comparison to people who'd been in the game longer. From what I've been told, it's like this on all Accenture project teams, which is a HUGE plus for the company in my book...let's just see how the rest of the summer goes.
Posted by marquis930 at June 30, 2005 04:08 PM