> I see some medium and large ones around (like Accenture) and I wonder if they can have good environments or if they quickly turn into "renting expensive warm bodies" shops only pressuring for filling up time-sheets and so on.

I worked with a bunch of contractors on an enterprise software project, one of my colleagues was from Accenture, he was actually pretty good at what he did, he gained a lot of marketable experience (AWS, automated deployment etc) on the gig by working long hours for months and learning from other experienced people in other teams. He didn't get any support from Accenture - they weren't interested in training him in any modern technical stuff that he wanted to learn. They would have been taking a hefty profit atop his daily rate. He was able to cash this in by getting a job with a smaller consultancy specialising in cloud services (better pay, better culture, more opportunities for learning and specialisation). So that's one example of how to use a bad professional services org job as a stepping stone to a better job in a more specialised professional services org, if you're willing to work hard for a year or two and have a bit of luck in terms of the project you get allocated.

I think some of the consulting companies work a bit like cults: get useful but naive young people on board who haven't experienced a sane working culture or figured out how to put boundaries in place between their life and their work, and bill them out for 80 hour weeks.

If you have a specialisation and can find work with a smaller consulting / professional services company that matches that specialisation, you might have a much more agreeable time.

@ncerezo -- your comment is thoughtful and adds to the discussion, unfortunately it is only visible to users with "showdead" on. so it goes.