I Quit My Job (Life Lessons From My 4 Years at Accenture)

For years, I’ve thought about writing this post. More specifically, when the day would come. I always knew it would, but beyond that, I wondered what it would feel like, and what would happen next.

Well, the day has come. Wednesday was my last day at Accenture. Yep, I left my job. Also, I suppose I should note for anyone who is new to following me, that I (used to) work full time in tech consulting.

I have had an intense, boring, fun, terrible, extraordinary, peculiar, mundane, by no means perfect, but extremely impactful experience over the last 4 years. I can’t think of any way else to describe it. I’l be honest; there were times I truly, truly hated it— feeling like I didn’t belong, that I wasn’t smart enough, detesting the work and resenting seeing my natural creative skill sets going to waste… But there were projects where I thrived, working alongside brilliant and inspiring people, in roles that challenged me, shaped me, taught me lessons and skills I will use for the rest of my life. I’ve never been more proud of myself than I have in this job. It was a quintessential love/hate relationship. Much like many facets in my life, the bad has never been all bad, just as the good has been multi-layered; complicated, challenging, but packed with purpose. I feel very mixed about it being over.

I mentioned that I have thought about the day when I would write this post detailing how I’ve left Accenture. Despite the various low points and day dreaming of when I would move on, my nostalgic cancerian disposition does force a rose colored perspective on it all. I think about the mentorship I have found during my tenure; specifically, one manager who was a rockstar in every sense, whose managerial style I could only hope to one day emulate over a team of my own. She got shit DONE and kept us all working at full speed, 24/7. I have never grinded the way that I did when I worked on this team. It was the summer of 2018; I worked from home, my days starting with an 8:30 am call and ending no earlier than 7:30 pm most nights. We didn’t do lunch breaks. I’ll never forget one night when our team had to finish a tedious series of tests for a design change we were implementing for our client. It was leading up to the 4th of July long weekend and I had already made the drive to my family’s cottage, working the whole way up. The five of us were on one big call, testing away… five hours in. Six hours in. It was 10:30 pm on the Friday, my family already boozing away down on the dock. My manager had started playing country music at her apartment, letting us know that she had officially opened a wine bottle. I told her I just cracked open a beer. I never once remember thinking “man this sucks.” If anything, I remember smiling and laughing as we joked around, motivating each other to keep getting through our never ending tests. When we finally all finished we just were ecstatic, like wow, we did it guys. No complaints, just all the more reason to celebrate.

She was like that. She had this power to make you work so fucking hard but never once feel resentful of it. It wasn’t that I wanted to make her proud; I wanted to be a colleague she respected and viewed as an equal. I was always a little scared of her intensity and directness, but she was also my friend. We talked about our personal lives. We would eat jelly beans late at night in the office and trade each other for the flavors we didn’t like. She put me in charge with the client when she went on vacation one week. I had to lead all of our calls, present data findings and provide analysis to the scariest and largest client call I’ve ever been on (let alone led), manage our scope of work, manage both our onshore and offshore team. Her confidence in me to do that spoke volumes.

That project, and her leadership, and will stick with me forever.

I think about the friends I made, some even all the way back as an intern, people who have left a significant impact on my life and will forever be a part of it. Especially my work “mom” who I met when I was on my one and only travel project:

I was commuting every Monday morning to Detroit, after a year and a half of working solely from home. That first day, I remember being at the auto plant where the client was located until 8 pm. It was March, freezing, pitch dark, I had been up since 4:30 am and safe to say was NOT feeling it. It was uncomfortable and I felt so out of my element. The team was largely men, all senior level managers. I thought the work was going to be boring as shit, and I was going to have to fly somewhere to do it every single week. That first night I got back to my hotel room, I sobbed hysterically and desperately wanted to come home.

The funny thing is, this project ended up being a huge turning point in my life, for many reasons. It was on this project that I learned that sometimes it isn’t about the work you’re doing or where you’re doing it… It’s about the people with you in the trenches. And here, I met some of the best talent Accenture had to offer. We became like a little family, going to trendy dinners, wine tastings, Tigers games, exploring the city. I met my work mom and we bonded instantly. She was in her 30s, living such a different life than me, but we just got each other. The people are what made the experience what it was, and I am so grateful for that lesson.

Now here’s the incredibly personal, crazy kicker. If you know me personally, you know that I believe in signs from the universe like no other. It was through a chain of unexpected and unwelcome events that led me onto this first traveling project, and— at risk of sounding completely over dramatic— it honestly, truly altered the course of my adult life at the time. It was a few weeks into this project, after starting to bond with the team and get into the groove of the traveling, when it started to dawn on me that I was dreading flying back home, to the relationship I was in. As I started to build my confidence in this role, traveling every week, pushing myself mentally and professionally to places I didn’t think I was capable of, I realized how much I liked this self. More so than the self I had been in my little relationship bubble. Yep, this project was the catalyst to my breakup. Which led to me moving home, to deciding I wanted to go back to school, taking the GRE, getting into USC… Just a little piece of the puzzle that ultimately led me to where I am today and to the life I am living.

I have Accenture to thank for so much. It was at this company that I not only embraced my inner badass, but realized that I was smart and capable and hard working enough to do whatever I set my mind to. Data migration? Sure. Writing functional specs? Yeah I can do that. Writing test scripts? Drafting business requirements out of discussions with stakeholders? Driving KPI metrics? Shit, learning how to do v lookups and other random ass formulas on Excel? Whatever they had me doing, no matter how daunting it seemed at the beginning or how little it seemed to do with anything I was good at… I was game.

My time at Accenture was never linear, never staying the same thing for too long… Something of which, I’ve learned, is true of life. Nothing can be taken for granted or for certain and change will always happen. Always. I realized I might as well start getting used to throwing my meticulously curated plans out the window half the time. I honestly cannot think of a better company or line of work where I could learn as much random shit as I did because it was so many things, serving so many purposes. It was both technical skills and life lessons. It was my Business 101, being an English undergrad major who didn’t have a clue about the technology world. I knew the day would come when I would leave to pursue a different path. Something creative, something I was genuinely passionate about. And that day came, but not in the way that I anticipated. I will be pursuing my masters in Digital Social Media in the USC School of Communications, which will merge my two words: Accenture, and The Blonde in Pink. I don’t know for certain what’s next, but I know that I wouldn’t be able to do it without this experience.

Accenture has been one of the most formative and chaotic relationships in my adult life… And for that, I am forever grateful.