Avoid Promontory Financial Group. You will only be mistreated here.
Pros
Projects are interesting and high-profile, clients are first-rate. If this is your first job in consulting you can pad your CV with some attractive bullet points and then quit for a better job. But that's it. There are pros to working here if you are patient enough to look past the firm's many failings. As long as you treat Promontory as a stepping stone to something better, you will be able to manage.
Cons
Where to begin? Several managers (pampered former regulators) have not reached an adult level of maturity. You should expect outbreaks of yelling and tantrums from certain senior managers if a project doesn't go their way. All they want is for the project to get done quickly so that they can grab the money and put you, the mere pawn, onto the next assignment. If you get between them and the cash by something so unreasonable as taking time to produce quality work for your client, you will pay the price with a dressing-down and deductions from your bonus. That is, if you even get a bonus. Compensation has stagnated in recent years. The management might be charitable enough to throw you a few pennies if you've grovelled to them enough that year. Considering the top-tier clients you will serve and the amount of work you will be expected to do (60 hour weeks and weekend work common) the rewards are mediocre. Promotion does not exist here unless you are personally connected to a major client. Your career will go nowhere, as much as Promontory will promise promotions to keep you working here. There is a suffocating cult of personality built around the CEO and other senior regulators who run the operation. It's a small version of the Stalinist Soviet Union. You will be expected to defer to their imaginary expertise without question, and you could get sacked if you don't. But if you look closely at the quality of work that Promontory produces it's either the same or worse than what what you see at other medium-sized consultancies. The fact that this firm has so many old regulators working for it certainly does not make their output any better. Promontory will try to lure in naive young applicants with the prestige of working alongside these people, but don't be taken in. It's a bait-and-switch: the amount of knowledge in this firm is not even close to what they say it is, and as a junior you are never going to be near the big names unless they want to verbally abuse you. At the end of the day, Promontory's London office is an insignificant, minor firm pretending to be a major player. It would be laughable if they weren't so nasty to work for.
