consultant

senior consultant

software engineer

group manager

manager

Avanade

I was recently laid off from Avanade because of Yet Another Company Re-Org. These happen about once a year. I'm pretty sure that no team I was on didn't change its name at least once, if not multiple times. 

While Avanade was a pleasant enough place to work (until they laid me off with no warning), they have a number of issues:

1) They don't know how to be much else besides a consulting company. This is reflected in their tiered hierarchy, where you can be a "consultant" or "senior consultant" and never consult a day in your life as part of your job description (yet still be expected to complete training for consultants. But they also haven't been able to effectively pivot to the annuity-based revenue they were hoping to pivot to when they started acquiring other companies to being providing *aaS.

2) They are top-heavy. There is WAY too much senior management whose job descriptions seem to only be calling meetings and making PowerPoint decks. I honestly can't tell you what most of them actually brought to the company.

3) They are *cheap*. While the salaries are decent, they're below market rate (a fact they know, since they're aware of a higher level of attrition than they'd like), and they will find any way to nickel and dime you on benefits by obeying the letter of the law, rather than the spirit. I was denied a second week of paternity leave because my son was born before the date when they started giving the second week out. And I was also denied a $34 a month stipend for my bus pass because I worked in a building with fewer than 99 people, so they weren't mandated by the city law to give it to us.

I was glad to land the job with Avanade when I did in early 2019...just as the Advisory group was forming and really starting to role. And we were hiring like mad!  But leadership just did a really poor job figuring out what Advisory was, how to organize it, how to staff it, how to sell it...particularly in the Data area.

My organization - Data & AI Advisory - was literally 3 people in North America for my first year. My boss, me, and a Manager.  Leadership kept shifting, and the Advisory org itself couldn't quite figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up. And my boss was incapable of making the case for hiring. By 2020, we had over 100 people in Org Change Mgt, and 3 in Data. What a shame.

By the time Covid rolled around, Advisory was a land mine waiting to explode. They did a major re-org in early 2021, but it was too late for me...they put me on PIP in early Nov and gave me 6 weeks (over Tgiving, Xmas and NY) to make impossible numbers. But really, the truth is that they had to cut heads, and technically they didn't have to give me any opportunity at all, so... 

In summary, I was really happy at Avanade for most of my time there. The culture is great: generally relaxed and casual, and most people are helpful. If they can fix their Data Advisory issues, I'd give it another shot in the future. But not under the current leadership or org structure. Of course, they're booting a lot of Advisory leadership, too, so maybe they'll figure it out sooner rather than later.

IT Operations or UCCMS is one of the dark "black sheep" corners of Avanade. Unlike the consulting side of Avanade where employees are much happier according to Indeed and Glassdoor, you're going to have a hard time getting your name out. If you wind up inside UCCMS., you are expendable and promotion is still all about who you rub shoulders with. Going beyond and above the call of duty means nothing to them. Fellow engineers may find your work useful but for  the whole of company, it's in one ear and out the other 24/7  You only receive feedback when something goes wrong and if you work in Seattle, your job is to have every neglected and escalated incident by other operation centers dumped onto you and despite being the center which actually gets cases solved, you will remain just as expendable  as when you first started.  You are not treated as a real employee of Avanade, but in fact, a drone of Accenture.   It's not to say you should avoid the whole of Avanade as again, I've heard the consulting part of the company is pretty good but please, please, please avoid  the Unified Communications (UCCMS) or MSDC part of the company. For years and years from one episode of bad, and sometimes non-existent management to another, UCCMS has refused to get it's act straight on even the very basics and yet are still willing to sell your job out to the lowest bidder. Quality work means nothing to them in this dark corner of the company.

Individual managers, as with other professional services firms, make or break the team.  When "leaders" haven't a clue how to approach the work (but they have financial goals), the team catches heck trying to figure out how to deliver what leaders can't articulate or facilitate.  When leaders can't articulate their expectations for team/individual goals, individuals flounder.  Too many senior people caught up in "selling" (their performance measure, $).  Not enough managers focused on enabling delivery to clients or improving outcomes (quality or repeatable/reusable processes) or developing the team/individuals.  Plan to spend time developing relationships to stay "engaged".  Project leaders (Directors+) are allowed to "cherry pick" team members, to the point of excluding available and capable talent in favor of "friends", a death knell to juniors and new entrants (their performance measure, billable hours).  When the "right" people know and support you, you begin gain professional "traction".  Your first few years can be tenuous.  Cautiously consider any new opportunities (new or developing practices, new leaders) that come your way.  They may require "starting over"...

I  worked at Avanade as a Sr Consultant and learned quickly that it was a dead-end job.  When technical advancement started to improve, it was offered to directors and above so it was out of reach for Sr Consultants.  The company seems a bit top-heavy with too many managers who often worked as developers on a project.  Met several managers and a solution architect that didn't have the soft/consultant skills to communicate well.

Staffing offered very little choice of projects and would submit you to projects you didn't always want or have skills for.  They also ignored feedback to be removed from a potential project and also not take my project suggestions seriously.  Not all projects were visible to everyone so you, unfortunately, needed to rely on the good-old-boy network most of the time to find good projects.

Certification is basically required for technical advancement and company marketability.  I had to invest a lot of personal time for certification training while on a project to keep my chargeability number high for a good performance review and year-end bonus.  Bench time was the best time to learn new skills for certs.

Work experience was primarily driven by the client and the Accenture team.  Productivity suggestions or improvements were often ignored.

Avanade management cares very little about their employees, their career goals, work/life balance, or anything else about them.  You work for Avanade, you are a resource.  You aren't Joe Johnson, you are "Resource Id 16433"

Sales drives everything, and sales/management will do anything to get the sale.  Ability to deliver is secondary for management.  It is common to get handed a project that has little chance of success due to poor planning/design and a sales push to get the client to sign on the dotted line.  The developers, analysts, and PMs are then the ones who get punished when the project doesn't go right. Either by working long hours, or poor performance reviews.

Luck is the main factor in career advancement at Avanade.  You need to get lucky and get staffed on projects that will actually help you grow and advance your career.  And you have very little choice in choosing a project.  Be very careful in rejecting a proposed project for you - there will be ramifications.  
For projects you basically get stuck with whatever sales team reserves you "first", even if there is a better role available for you (or even a more strategically important role for the company).

I had a Data Engineering Internship with Avanade in the Summer of 2023 and can honestly say that the environment is great, most of the employees are very supportive and inclusive, and there are pretty good benefits. However, I was told that if I had any concerns with my project, I could reach out to my intern supervisor for support and I feel that I was misled. I expressed my concerns that I was not doing much work or gaining any valuable experiences on my client project, and all my professional development was through certification courses or personal research and requested that I help with another project in addition to my assigned project. I was repeatedly told to give it more time and we would revisit the issue, while in the background my intern supervisor just considered me impatient instead of communicating to me that this was not a feasible change. It wasn't until I was told that I would not be considered for any full-time positions that this concern of theirs was communicated, when I was genuinely trying to advance my career as I was encouraged to do by my other peers.

After the last of the founders left, the company wanted to become a full consulting company rather than a purely technical subcontractor to it's parent Accenture. 
It would have been a great idea because since Accenture controlled and the engagements, Avanade employees were generally "the help" I never saw and SOW or any other project documentation during my tenure, and most communication was purely verbal without documentation which led to many misunderstandings.
When Avanade attempted to become more independent, they staffed up with a lot of new management employees who were inadequate for the task. In particular, they had no sales staff capable of supporting the additional overhead.
Lots of good people were lost in the aftermath.
Avanade is a purely technical shop, and that is the only attribute valued. Senior personnel engage in endless meetings trying to demonstrate pure technical expertise over minor points not relevant to getting the job done.

Avanade puts a great deal of emphasis on skills training, Especially not assigned to a deployment project.  The company prides itself on the number of Microsoft certifications their teams and team members bring to the table. Outside of Microsoft, they lead the industry. Typical work day is all about winning the deal or getting the job done. Teams work well together.  I walked away with a better understanding of delivery management and the ability to more effectively use KPIs to proactively and preemptively address project issues.  The hardest part of the job is getting staffed as a higher level manger.  The sales cycle is too long to survive without being staffed on a current project.  The best part of the job is being on a team, either pre-sales or delivery.  When the sale is closed or the delivery is complete, everyone walks away a better professional.

Disclaimer: I cannot speak on all of Avanade, as I was only part of a small Microsoft project, however, this is my experience.

The job description versus the actual job was so completely different that I would have not accepted the job If I have known. The position was described as an Azure administrator when in reality you do very little of the actual work - instead, a developer would remote in and use your credentials to do the work as you watched to make sure the Azure Key Vault, storage keys, and passwords were not breached. Yes, it does require some knowledge of scripting to make sure that the script would not pull from the Key Vault but not much else was needed. 

Management was also poor for this contract, one was always missing, another not knowing what to do and the technical lead was so overworked they could not make time to help where the others lacked.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Consultant 13 salaries reported	$112,885 per year
Senior consultant 17 salaries reported	$130,971 per year
Software engineer 29 salaries reported	$101,007 per year
Group manager 8 salaries reported	$175,800 per year
Manager 3 salaries reported	$150,000 per year

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