I hope that doesn't sound too sinister. My wife used to refer to it as "the brainwashing". The reality is that Accenture needs to quickly bring together large

I hope that doesn't sound too sinister. My wife used to refer to it as "the brainwashing". The reality is that Accenture needs to quickly bring together large teams of people who have not previously worked together, and make them productive as quickly as possible. One way to facilitate that is to ensure that they have a common language and understanding of how projects are run. I don't know if they still do it, but throughout my tenure at Accenture new hires were sent for an initial training course at the firm's St. Charles campus. The course was traditionally 3 weeks long, and in addition to teaching basic programming to those who had no prior experience (many Accenture hires are not CS or engineering students), it gave new staff some experience with how Accenture runs projects. After the course, new "analysts" are assigned to their first project. The first couple of years as an analyst tend to be "in the trenches" type work, as people don't really have much industry experience. After a couple of years as an analyst you become a "consultant", and start to get more authority and responsibility. It typically takes about 5 years to make it to "manager", at which point you start to get real authority within project teams. From there, career path's vary. I don't know what the current stats are, but during my tenure I would estimate that about 1 out of every 10 hires actually stayed with the firm to the senior manager level.