Pros
There are no pros. Not one.
Cons
It is difficult to describe how truly terrible this organization is but I'll try my best. This organization's leadership team is full of some of the worst management I've ever seen in my decade of professional experiences. Let's start with what they think they're actually good at. At most tech firms, there are different practices - business intelligence, advanced analytics, cloud technologies, etc. At SDG, they'll take anyone who has worked with 'data' and put them wherever 'there's a need' - aka they just signed a contract and got a big bonus and don't care what happens afterward. That means they'll put data scientists on cloud migration projects. They'll put BI analysts on data warehousing projects. They'll put software engineers on strategy projects. You might think this would be a good opportunity - I promise you it is not. When you are put on one of these projects, you will receive no training. If you're an analyst out of college, you will receive no training. They will just send you youtube videos and a couple PowerPoints and say figure it out. Then management will yell at you and scold you for not knowing what you're doing. The leads and few good managers that exist do not have time to train you because the leadership team cuts deals any way they can (more on that later) and are already working 12-16 hour days meeting with the clients, doing development work, then trying to upskill the team any way they can. You will be expected to work nights and weekends. They brag about being 'technology-agnostic' (eye-roll) which basically means they'll put you on something you've never worked on and claim you're an 'expert' so they can sell a project then yell at you when you don't know it. This happens at all levels of the organization. At a team lead and management level, it's almost worse. In a pathetic grab at any deal they can get, leadership will sign deals for low cost and cut timelines in half. They'll staff you kids out of college who have never worked a day in their lives, and you will be expected to lead projects, train them, also probably work on development because they've never done any of this before, then also check their work. EVERY lead or manager I talked to (across multiple clients and industries) was working at least 12 hour days and at least a half day on the weekends. All of these people - the analysts, consultants, leads, and managers - are great people. I truly liked everyone I worked with. But everyone is worked to the bone by an upper management team that's never taken a project management class in their lives. I've seen them make deals with clients to create entire dashboards or analytics solutions with a couple weeks timeline. When I asked about this (multiple times), the leadership team said 'well we can probably do this in a few days so we figured a week would be good enough.' My gosh. First, they couldn't do that in a few days, I'm not even sure they have the skill to do anything other than care about their own pockets. Second, that doesn't make any sense from a project management standpoint (but they'd know this if they'd ever taken a PM class in their entire lives). And third, there's no time included for training and development. So now everyone's working weekends so management can keep signing deals that give them half million dollar salaries while just yelling at everyone below them that they aren't good enough. And oh yeah, you'll be expected to work with offshore teams (who are really nice) but that means you're doing 6am meetings every day. Now the days are 6am to 8pm. So what happens when people aren't matched on the right projects, don't know what they're doing, are given teams of new hires out of college because it's cheaper, all with timelines cut in half so the leadership teams can have their salaries? Burnout. A lot of burnout. Multiple people went to the emergency room for stress. Multiple people went on FMLA medical leave for anxiety. The turnover rate at one point in a project was 40%. Your team will not last more than a few weeks. It would be slightly better if leadership saw these problems and had any ounce of empathy, but it doesn't exist. There isn't even any channel for feedback to leadership because they don't care. When I communicated these concerns to leadership I was literally told 'This is really negative. I need you to come to me with solutions, not problems.' Other members of the team would express how hard a time they're having and leadership would tell them that this was on them and it was their mistake to fix. One last thing, which feels less important compared to people going to the hospital for stress but still shows how absolutely terrible this place is. There is not one person of color in leadership. Not one woman. Not one LGBT+ person. There is not one employee resource group. There are no HR programs. No wellness programs. No budget for team activities. Nothing. They do not care about your wellbeing. I look back on this review and recognize how scathing it is. Even for how serious this review is, it still does not adequately capture how truly terrible this organization is. These people should not be responsible for people's livelihoods. This place has ruined lives. People have gone to the emergency room, gone on stress-induced medical leave, ruined their personal lives and relationships - all for the ego and drive of some powerful, rich men who could not possibly care less about the lives they ruined and the scorched earth it took to get there. Do yourself a favor. Put yourself first. Don't even consider it.