Keystone Reviews

- Have more economics and legal cases than strategy cases. If you are looking for a place where you can gain a lot of transferable skills, get ownership of your work - this isn't the place for you. - Most associates do verbatim note taking and synthesis. You are not part of all the meetings so you play a tangential role to the team unlike other consulting firms - Associates don't do any modeling, data analysis work as keystone hires specialized data scientists for those roles, unlike other economics consulting firms, where you get to work directly with data tools -Your promotion cycle and growth is largely dependent on how strongly your PDL advocates for you and can get lost in a combination of bad PLs -Senior Management is not well-trained and require you to work long hours with no purpose. -Few senior managers have a lot of power & say - need to be in good books or else can have a bad experience with staffing. a politically driven workplace -People are not nice - toxic work environment

Don't believe those 5-star reviews: they were written because of the HR department to improve tanking reviews in the last 3 years. They hide the true situation from outsiders If you've heard about strategy work - don't believe those words. It's less than 1/4 of projects. Almost all work is about legal/economics. No work life balance: expect 80-100 hous. More than at MBB. Unrealistic expectation, conflicts, and late night/weekend work. No culture: the firm's culture pre-PE acquisition vanished. Half of my colleagues disappeared in 2022. Many left by themselves to avoid nasty surprises after layoffs on client's side. Those who stayed - just try to survive. Lot's of conflicts and backstabing. Put work on others. Avoid discussions and responsibility. Everyone would ignore you if you have a question or need advice. Abusive environment due to both managers and leaders. Don't expect a positive regard for doing hard work. Everyone avoids solving client's problems to avoid responsibility/blame. Leadership just pushes new ideas to sell more project and avoids participation in project meetings. When clients start to ask hard questions, managers just throw juniors under the bus to shift blame and avoid questions during performance reviews. Best strategy - not to say anything and not to attract attention. If the firm promissed you anything - don't expect that. The promise is worth nothing - the firm will forget about it in 1-2 weeks. And your request will be just ignored even if you remind about it. Greed is paramount. Layoffs started when growth was 10% instead of 25%. 30+ people were impacted with 2 weeks of severance. You are not an employee. Not a team-member. You are a resourse. Don't expect to survive for long or learn much. Don't expect to stay. Save your own time and sanity. If you got an offer - decline. Unless you plan to work for a couple of months max. It's not worth it. Their salary is not worth all the troubles.