Deve’s Blog

And after the first three days of “work” I can’t but begin promoting Accenture, can I?
Ok, I’ll tell you how it went…
At 9 am of the first day I was at the San Donato offices, there was quite a lot of people (I think there around 40 new employees just here in Milan), they took a picture of each of us for the badge and we went in one of the rooms for training.

First part: burocracy… they gave us tons of paper and tons of things to sign: well, the contract of course, but also notes about safety on the workplace, data handling, protection of reserved data and whatnot. Then they explained to us how the Accenture contract differs from the standard one, which is the national contract for the metalworking sector (no idea why… I guess for cost reasons…); just marginal differences, to our benefit (for example the fixed-term contract might not become a permanent contract at the end of the 18 months, while in Accenture it automatically does).

Then we were divided according to our “Growth Platform”: quite simply, who is in the MC (Management Consulting) and who is in the SIT (System Integration & Technology), like me. Then a very funny Senior Manager, Massimo Morielli, made us watch this video (and when he said “you’ll find it on YouTube, too” I thought he was joking):

then explained to us Accenture’s Core Values and finally reassured us about working hours: “well, you see, I’m married, I’ve got two children… it means I managed to get home at least twice, right?”

The rest of the day and all the following day were a series of presentations about different aspects of the society: from stock purchase plans to Accenture Research (a group of specialists who can support consultants with research of any kind, from a simple company profile to more complex graphs and aggregated data), from the procedures for trips and relocation to the mess of compiling your Time Report every 15 days (worked hours, overtime, expenses to be refunded etc.). By the way, that thing about Accenture not paying overtime, a rumor which is going around quite a lot, really seems to be a load of crap… what you mark on your Time Report is what you get on your payroll, with all the related extras for the overtime; and if you go over 20% of the standard weekly working hours, the hours exceeding that limit go in a “hours bank” which you can use as vacation hours. The only things that could happen are A) you’re a manager and your contract says you don’t get extra pay for overtime B) your project manager asked you not to report your extra hours, which is something that shouldn’t happen and that is contrary to the firm’s policies…

Now, at this point I was already beginning to get an idea of how big and complicated the society was… there’s a department to handle Time Reports and the justifications (invoices, medical certificates), a department keeping track of technologies (cell phones, notebooks, support), one working on the trips or on lightning fast passport issuing…

And even more yesterday, when they finally gave us our notebook and the data to access the “Portal”… all of the Accenture sites are global (the same for the whole world), and there’s a lot of those… from myLearning to handle training and online courses (like the ones they made us take yesterday afternoon, despite the Orientation course ending around 13 and despite being assured, the previous day, that in the afternoon we would have been allowed to leave :|), to myPerformance to set your career growth objectives, to the list of all the company’s Policies (hundreds of “rules” and dispositions spacing from data processing to the week-end Fly Back when working away from the main offices, to the ethical code…)…
Poi ieri, che finalmente ci hanno dato il portatile e i dati per accedere al “Portal”, ancora di più… tutti i siti di Accenture sono globali (gli stessi per tutto il mondo), e sono un casino… da myLearning per gestire training e corsi online (come quelli che ci hanno fatto fare ieri pome, nonostante il corso di Orientation finisse in teoria alle 13 e i giorni prima ci avessero detto “nel pomeriggio potete andare a casa” :|), a myPerformance per impostare gli obiettivi di crescita professionale, all’elenco di tutte le Policies aziendali (centinaia di “regole” e disposizioni che spaziano dal trattamento dei dati al Fly Back di fine settimana per le trasferte al codice etico…)…
And let’s not forget Outlook’s Global Address Book, which gives us ALL the e-mail addresses of ALL Accenture employees: as long as they tell you “170 thousands employees in 49 countries” you don’t really get what it means… right, you shouldn’t do like a Spanish guy who, a few years ago, rather than sending a mail to his friends sent it to ALL the Consultants of the IGEM (Italy, Greece, Eastern Europe and Middle East) area… unfortunately for him it contained a video, whose specific nature is unclear, and so this guy didn’t come out of it well…

So, it’s a bit unsettling, you really feel like you’re into something big, and the organization is undoubtedly rigid… but I don’t mind it at the moment, maybe it’s cause I’m quite methodic and thorough, too. We’ll see, of course the real impact will be on the first project, that won’t be before a couple of weeks: for now I’ll follow 80 hours of SDF training (Solution Delivery Fundamentals, it should give us the basis to be able to enter a real project with at least some ideas about how to work).

Oh right, I’ll close with the notebook: really not bad, a HP NC6400, with a Core 2 T2300E processor @ 1.66 GHz (not the best, but decent), 1 GB RAM (the same), 60 GB HD (more than enough I think), DVD writer, various stuff like Bluetooth, WiFi, Touchpad + Touchpoint, fingerprint reader (a finger and you’re logged into Windows… awesome…), great battery duration (6-7 hours), relatively thin and light (2.3 kg). Cool…