Bain & Company reviews

Bain has a deeply hierarchal culture. As an EA, you are amongst the lowest in the hierarchy. Direct management supports this unbalanced view of worth by employing a fear based management style. You are expected to have no boundaries, no sense of self and exist only to serve the 3 partners you support. You are not a team member, rather you are treated akin to a servant, and one that should feel grateful for the opportunity to work at Bain. The allocation of partners seem to be the luck of the draw. Some EAs have decent partners they support, others do not. Expect to see colleagues have small breakdowns (ie. anxiety, crying, etc.) and expect to extend emotional support to your colleagues on the regular (and need it as well). Don't expect support from management. Partners have zero accountability. They treat EAs any way they like. Personal tasks which are outside your scope of work/job description may be expected of you. You will be overworked in a high pace, high stress environment where anything less than perfection is up for scrutiny by management (regardless of how minor a perceived flaw and regardless of who made the mistake - it will be your fault). Your annual review may be weaponized and communicated as something to fear/always be aware of. From my experience, it has been used to manipulate our team, rather than be used for its intended use of feedback/professional development. There is an extremely high turnover rate on the EA/MA team for good reason.

These reviews must be fake - there is no way consulting staff would rate Bain 4.5 stars as a place to work...turnover is extremely high and NPS in many regions is negative. Bain is still an old boys club. The most toxic individuals continue to get promoted and rewarded while actually talented, value adding employees leave and go onto bigger and better things. Heard one office hired an intern class that was 90% male. All this talk about diversity but no concrete actions put in place. Hours are extremely unpredictable. One day you can be working 14+ hours and the next day under 10. Impossible to establish a routine. The deadlines are fake and false sense of urgency every day, people act like if you don't finish your deck on time, the world will explode when in reality, no one outside your 6-person bubble actually cares. Overall, this whole industry shouldn't even exist. Recession is coming...good luck selling work. Coupled with aggressive hiring in recent years, everyone is sitting pretty waiting to get staffed, utilization must be below 50%. Inefficient working style - so many levels between you and the client. Everyone has a different perspective - get ready to iterate on your one slide 1000x to have it not even included in steerco materials. Performance reviews EXTREMELY subjective. One person might give you exceeding in all regards, the next thinks you're below standards. No formal mechanism for upward feedback for supervisors who aren't managers. Other firms moving to fully flexible, hybrid working model but Bain still forcing folks to come into the office. No one wants to be in the office. The loudest people in the room thrive here, not the smartest people. Also helps to be a white male.