Left big 4 IT consulting for smaller firm - AMA

Had a laugh reading through this. I apologize for my latency - was at my brothers bachelor party all weekend.

Let me answer some questions and respond to some comments first!
1) What is the big 4? These are accounting firms that hold the majority of the share in that space. Its comprised of PWC, Deloitte, KPMG and E&Y. Most if not all of these companies also work in the consulting field in areas such as Technology, Human Captial and Strat/Ops. They are employed on projects and contracts for work in the federal/state and local government, virtually all fortune 500 companies and other companies as well.

2) Why I wanted to talk here in stead of reddit.
I like this forum. While I mostly peruse this site for entertainment, I've been lurking since roughly 2009 back on FOH. While I wasn't expecting such a harsh response, I guess that's par for the course here. I also rather expected that the Big 4 was common terminology, at least for gents and madams in this part of the forum...

3) Regarding comments about my age and experience. Sure, I am young! And if you feel that you wont gain anything by asking a legitimate question, then carry on and good day to you fine sirs.

KegKilla - shoot me a line!


Basically, I posted this open ended and basically blank post because I didn't want to interject what I wanted to say vs what you all would actually want to know about. I can paint the broad strokes, and will do here in a follow up post, but I am off to catch 2 flights.

See below for a bit of what I can type for now.
Basics:
Company: Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Beginning/Ending Salary: 70K/90K respectively.
Clients [Keeping Vague for personal and contractual reasons]: 2 state governments welfare systems, 2 fortune 100 clients and countless business proposals to solicit new/expand exiting contracts.
Hours: 45-85 per week. Varied. Worked 6 weeks straight (no weekends/vacation)for 14 hours per day on average as my longest stint.

My "elevator explanation" of my job was this: Managed a team of developers and analysts throughout several SDLC iterations to continually strategize and implement policy changes on the [State Redacted]'s Welfare Distribution System. I developed and facilitated several process improvements, training courses and conducted strategic plans with key stakeholders of the client's executive staff.

I will break this down more in the next post.

kegkilla_sl said:

what did you study in college? what certifications do you have? who exactly were you "managing" as a second year? what software and systems does your technical expertise lie in?

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Before I give more detail, I wanted to answer these questions.

I double majored in Information Technology and Philosophy from a small private college in the NE US. The IT portion is what got me the job, but the critical thinking of philosophy is what got me to really excel at not drinking the kool-aid at Deloitte. Deloitte tends to hire from the same schools, and that breeds similar results. But I had an alum connection who knew that I would do well. Consulting is all about seeing all sides of a problem quickly and making the best choice for you and your clients. Watch a little bit of House of Lies, its not that exaggerated, but its the same sport.

At least with Deloitte, the Technology Consulting Field (unless we are talking about the InfoSec AERS side), didnt really care for certs. They were much more of a "nice to have". That didnt stop me from getting these in my first year.
Certs:
ITIL Foundation v3
CSM
CompTIA Security+
CompTIA GreenIT



Who I was managing: After 6 months, I was able to rise to managing a team of 4 dedicated .NET developers, 1 DBA, 1 adobe forms guy and one COBOL dude. At the end of my first year I was regularly interfacing with clients on my own, managing them, 10 or so shared/dedicated internal resources and met with the project partners regularly to discuss new ways to improve our project (ill mention in another post). By the end of 2 years I was managing multiple teams with a mixture of shared and dedicated resources through out new and maintenance SDLC cycles, usually 20 or more people. The most complex system I managed developers for was [insert state name here]'s welfare system. It was a cobol mainframe, with hierarchical database. As part of the modernization since 2002, slowly but surely, more functionality moved in to a Orcale DB back end using vb.net as a front end for welfare benefits workers to process benefits. However, all batch processing was still done by the mainframe, and we still used that as our system of historical record. We used biztalk to work with the Fed and I also had extensive hands on with Corticon Business rules engine that ran on as a java applet (pro tip: It is a bag of richards).

I will post more about tech/ mgmt expertise, later. Suffice it to say I have worked with all of those technologies (not claiming an expert), but its more about the positive impact that I was able to make with the client exec staff and internal improvements within those projects. Naturally, I am an a mixed introvert/extrovert and a natural leader. Basically my friends describe me as the nicest asshole you will ever meet. My time at Deloitte really taught me how to work with people strategically, to influence for results and how to bring business value TLDR Bridging the gap between what an IT solution can provide and what the business/client needs.

kegkilla_sl said:

what advice do you have for me in pursuing a transition from the IT auditing side of things into the more consulting focused type work?

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Keg Killa - I actually went the opposite route. I am now an information security and audit support consultant with a small firm. Before I was basically a PM on steriods. There are a number of reasons why people want to leave audit, probably best to focus on those to determine what about consulting makes the best fit for you. So why do you want to leave and why would consulting meet your goals? In my experience, I would say that finding out those reasons will propel the best advice I can give. At least for me knowing exactly what I want and why is what drives me to be passionate toward reaching a goal. By playing to what want in your next career, your negotiations will go much better and will be more focused on the best consulting career. Obviously this is not something profound, and sorry to employ the Socratic Method).

If you want blanket advice, beyond leveraging your network try to find what you do best and what you like about what you do. Then, based on the type of consulting you want to do, try to find any common strengths. "I have done X which makes me great at X and Y". Best case - you prove that you are already doing the job you want in some capacity with your current job. Slightly less best case - you prove that you have the capacity because you have done things similar.

I can't stress enough, do not sell short your soft skills. Working with people, building relationships with the client is extremely important. Generally, especially with the larger teams, you will have people who are heads down in the code, network, and architecture. Consulting is about being able to understand all that, leverage your own expertise with the technology and present a unified front for the client based on the summation on your teams understanding. I was by NO fucking means the smartest, but because people still make the decisions, you have to work with each audience from exec to analyst with a different set of vocab.

Sorry for the long winded answer - again, focus on the first two paragraphs and let me know how we can work it.

Experience at "The Firm"

My first two projects with two different states was working to understand ACA and how it would impact states welfare distribution systems (mostly called Integrated Eligibility). These systems allow for benefits workers to process an online or paper application for the myriad of benefits a citizen can apply for. These range from Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP (previous food stamps), Transitional Assistance for Needy Families or TANF (Cash benefits), Medicare/Medicaid, Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

These legacy IE systems can be broken down in to 5 main parts Intake, Processing, Eligibility, Authorization, and Submit. Keep in mind this is quite literally the most reduced it can become for me to explain this intelligibly. There is a lot missing, but this is the gist.

Intake was where the caseworker would suss out what was being applied for and how to best process the incoming online or hardcopy application.

Processing is where the caseworker inputs and verifies all information submitted is correct. Think income, age, ssn, assets, debts, relationships, disability, incarceration, residency etc basically a full scale background check.
Eligibility weighed those factors and others to determine individuals as eligible or ineligible for a given set of applied benefits.

Authorization was responsible for setting the correct benefit amount based on the benefit received. It is not as simple as getting SNAP or Med assistance, as there were well over 1000 budgets and benefit packages total for each state. It also sent out client and provider notifications by mail and email of what action was taken regarding their application.

Submit recorded this information for later processing or renewals of benefits etc.

With ACA (Obamacare) - Changes to these systems were immense, not only internally, but how these traditional systems would support additional interfaces with the federal government and other external agencies. We are talking $160 million a year on top of all of the other mods going on, it was well into the 200's.

Additionally, based on the state's decision, for individuals who were not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid the welfare system would either create its own health insurance exchange or refer these individuals to the federal exchange where they would go shop for health insurance to be compliant with ACA.


-TBC-

Dyvim_sl said:

You need to become AAA+ at the buzzword bingo, just looks at the op and his consecutive responses keg, and see the writing on the wall.

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Business Buzzword Bingo!

Play this with colleagues during meetings for immediate success.

Coupled with standing up in the middle of someone talking and asking "Ok - so what are we ACTUALLY trying to accomplish here?" and you are basically the VP.

lol

lendarios_sl said:

The most important skill a developer, project manager, facilitator can have is understanding how does a complex system work; what are the little pieces and how they interact together.

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I would totally agree long term, this should be the goal. But understanding how THE system you are tasked with working on is not something that comes over night. But of course, knowing that you must understand the complex system to improve it is absolutely key.