Answer from a colleague who’s worked in a similar function at a big 4 in a previous life (now left, so may be skewing things here):
“there’s no way that would be viable. I’m assuming she’s not in a support role though. If your friend is joining as a grad, that means Analyst level – and those are the worker bees of the practice. There’s full time chargeable client project work, practice development time in your spare hours (or beach time) - then bid support work if you’re really good and want promotion… weekly example being: it’s 7pm & there’s a critical bid whose final decks haven’t been approved by the Partner that needs to be submitted by 10am tomorrow, and he’s only available after 10pm tonight? Welcome to a lost evening and early morning! I lost count of the weeks where I didn’t eat dinner with _ for several nights running.
There is some downtime if you’re on the beach, but cyber consulting (in fact any sort of client facing consulting) just isn’t realistic if you have caring responsibilities for three kids.
There’s a reason all the women I know either left for industry roles (like me), got a fulltime nanny or had stay at home dads.
Of course, in all that, I’ve assumed she’d be based at a home office near where she gets client work… many many of the people I worked with were based in client offices across the UK and even further… so that meant (as the norm).. up at 4am Monday for a 6am flight, on site all week at the client office (working late) to Thursday, head home around 3-4pm, get home around 10pm-11pm Thursday night, “work remotely” on Fridays… so basically a minimum of 100+ hour work week commitments on a GOOD week.
This wasn’t unusual or during busy season, this was at the core minimum of what our staff were expected to do.. nearer deadlines or if you had particularly brutal travel arrangements it would be even more. It was all or nothing. I’ve heard _ is better but don’t know anyone who has worked there recently who could verify that.
My advice is not to even try and compete at that type of role when you have 3 kids – OR do it with a solid practical plan (fulltime stay at home dad who covers ALL household related chores) AND ideally have a well thought out exit plan (stay for 2 years to leap up in the experience stakes, but know that it’s a short term personal sacrifice for long term career gain).”