Urban Science Reviews

If you are good at your job you will rapidly find yourself in a Catch-22 situation where you can't be promoted because you haven't done a particular certification course, but you can't go on the internal certification course because your work is too important for the time off to be approved. This leads to a situation where good employees regularly leave for other opportunities while sub-par "lifers" slowly work their way up the ladder and compound the problem by treating new talent as a threat. Some of the career paths are extremely limited because there's a prevailing attitude of, "that is done in the Detroit office, and can only be done in the Detroit office" - even if there are talented people capable of opening up huge amounts of new business in the branches, the head office is very closed-minded and sees this as a threat more than an opportunity.

There is only one career path available for new starters/graduates. This is one of the main reasons I left - coming from a technical background, I had no interest in consulting or management, but the analyst career path does not have an alternative to either. Although there is a technical aspect, it is restricted to SQL/Excel development. Additionally, the title of 'analyst' and the role itself feels somewhat vague. Responsibilities felt like a mix of data and business analysis. There is a lack of organised documentation for new starters to better understand the applications and databases. I found it wasn't a lack of SQL knowledge, but rather knowledge of the databases and how data is organised, that presented the biggest barrier to completing tasks. YMMV - depending on which team you are in, you may end up not meeting your manager/other team members for a long time as they are not based in your country's office. I never met either of my managers in person. Pension contribution could be better.