Avenade

[sunnysan]

Does anybody know anything about them other than what it says on their website?

[Churchill]

Does anybody know anything about them other than what it says on their website?

Nope.

[ratewhore]

yeah - they're called Avanade!!

JOint venture between MS and Accenture focussing on .Net solutions. From that assume 12 hour working days 500 miles from home...

[Crown Royal]

They're pretty much a body shop. I guess if its a contract it may not be too bad for a few months, but hopefully you're not considering a perm opportunity with them?

I did do some work with an Avanade team in France on an assignment a while back. The French contractors (via an agency) seemed to be on descent rates. But their perm staff were on the low end of the pay scale and in France that is pretty bad! Although I must say that the Avanade guys (both permies and contractors) would conduct themselves more professionally and were technically more competent, than some of the employees/contractors of other bodyshops, I've worked with in the past.

[mcquiggd]

I used to worked for them - on a permie basis. Very difficult company to join - average is about 7-8 interviews. Lots of very technically competent people - being taken advantage of. Many I knew at the time in the company have left in the last year.

Typically they use a smallish number of Avanade people to lead a project then body shop in Accenture people for the grunt work, as Avanade just doesnt have enough people. The real skills are in the Engineering group in America where they have developed some very nice 'assets' as a superset of the Enterprise Library (they co-developed it).

The highlight was spending a week in Seattle with some really fun people - the girls from Asia-Pacific were just sooooo cute!

[mcquiggd]

P.S I was on 40k plus perks but they charged me out at £248 an hour. I was a 'level 35' - an architect will be about a 'level 40-45' (about £340 an hour) and a developer a 'level 20 - 30' (about £175 an hour).

Frankly I dont think its worth it - its pretty easy to lure Avanade people into contracting once they realise how much more money they can make and do less travelling (which you pay for in advance and then have to claim back - I lent a guy £400 so he could attend a compulsory conference in London and he did a runner. Most seem to stay 6 months, get the training, and go.

[Spacecadet]

I had an interview with Avande a few weeks ago. Was one of the toughest interviews I've ever had, especially technically. Didn't think i'd be hearing again but then a few days later they wanted me to go back and see Accenture (who i'd be working on site with).. unfortunately Accenture said no

[mcquiggd]

Allegedly, according to the company propaganda, they have more MCSDs in Avanade than in MS. We were expected to get our MCSD within a couple of months of joining; one guy I knew passed all the exams in a week, scoring about 90% each time. .

A lot of the guys I went on the induction course were ex-Microsoft.

Avanade developed most of the Enterprise Library, and have their own superset which is a very nice product indeed - the engineering team in Seattle is top notch.

You get worked hard though and the compensation isnt worth it.

[Francko]

Allegedly, according to the company propaganda, they have more MCSDs in Avanade than in MS. We were expected to get our MCSD within a couple of months of joining; one guy I knew passed all the exams in a week, scoring about 90% each time. .

One exam a day! Impressive. Even just memorising the 300-400 questions in the braindumps that is still quite an achievement in just one day.

[Spacecadet]

One exam a day! Impressive. Even just memorising the 300-400 questions in the braindumps that is still quite an achievement in just one day.

Having actually been in an interview with those guys... you're expected to get relevant certification within 12 months. For me that would have meant MCDBA