Bain & Company Associate salaries in India (Updated 2025)

Likes

The company is good when you consider the salary and benefits but as said, all that shines is not gold.

Dislikes

Everything that shines is not gold. The culture, politics, work life balance, ill defined processes, rigidity to change, lack of SOPs, non empathetic leadership, ill trained team leaders is a major issue especially in finance. Moreover the company has some long termed employees who command even above the leadership though being junior and make it difficult for new employees to settle down. Overall the culture, work life balance and job security are pathetic which ultimately makes it impossible for you to enjoy the financial benefits they offer. I will never recommend this organisation to anyone who is sensible.

Likes

Pays well.

Dislikes

Very biased towards industry hires. Too much empowerment at junior level ( average age 23 years), pay attention to immature and entitled demands of the junior pool. Project Leader is a sandwiched position between the manager and team. Manager never supports the PL to maintain a good upward feedback. The PL is often disrespected and ignored.

Likes

1. Great culture- generally helpful people who try to make consulting sustainable as much as possible 2. Good perks in the office and other benefits 3. Comparatilevly lesser travel - you generally get assigned projects in your base location

Dislikes

...ough year with low number of projects and hence promotions have been delayed. 3. Lesser compensation than BCG and McK at all levels

Likes

... good things about Bain but they are hard to recall as they are not significant. Apart from salary/perks and people in your team, nothing else comes to mind.

Dislikes

There are many, but most critical ones are: - Lackluster leaders (Senior Managers and above) who have poor people management skills and some of them know very little about their subject matter and don't even try to learn. Ofcourse there are exceptions! - Work culture is a big issue. Company masquerades as a progressive firm with employee friendly policies but policy implementation is poor. WFH requests are allowed but frowned upon. Leaders preach about DEI sensitivity but don't practice it themselves. People are judged based on their looks (at least in my ex-team). No sense of personal space - supervisors can call you at night and on weekends to discuss the most trivial things. You will have to stretch a lot and it can become taxing after a while. HR is aware of most of the issues but does not have guts to confront leaders (who think they own the company). Interns were treated with utmost disregard by the HR (with no clear communication on their PPO or lack thereof). Quality of work is not as good as people think. And this is true for most consulting firms. All of them are peddling the insights which they don't know fully about and frankly don't even care to do a great job of it. Partners can completely throw a wrench in your work plan and case teams are only worried about cost of the project (which is fine but it should not come at the cost of quality). Overall consulting work is a big sham which most insiders know!

Likes

There is nothing to like about this place except salary and benefits!

Dislikes

Terrible management, they don't consider employees as human. Everyone is just a resource to clean up their shit! Overpromise to clients, and then make it hell for employees! There is work flexibility, which means you will start your day at 9 AM, but flexiblity is provided that you cannot end your day before 11 PM. Their definition of flexibility is just unending working hours!