I'm with Tony on this one - haven't worked there myself, but have a good friends who does, and it sounds *very little* like what the negative poster described. A lot of the work you will encounter at any strategy consultancy will require some number-crunching, and I believe that in the past Marakon was even more like that than the norm. The focus has shifted quite a bit though (my friend went there from an arts degree and has had no problems), and they have some great perks, like an extra unpaid month off per year, if you want it. She also has slightly better hours than I do, week on week, but this may not be true of the majority.However, while they are known and respected within consultancy, Marakon don't seem to have have so much name recognition outside the industry. Personally, I only want to stay in consulting as a 'first step' then go on to business school and other (not necessarily bigger and better) things, so I didn't really look at the smaller players. If this is the situation that you are in, you may want to consider McKinsey/Bain/BCG for the name recognition factor (plenty of people have done well from smaller places too, though). If you're looking more at a long term career, then it sounds to me as if you can't do much better than Marakon. Have you had a look at vault.com? They suffer from slightly the same problem as some posts on this board, namely that most people on it are either unhappy or in a job but unsatisfied, and so aren't necessarily the most objective or best informed, but they have seperate message boards for most consultancies and even published guides to major consultancies (Marakon may not qualify for that, but there would be at least an online, smaller guide).Good luck, anyway!
