Epsilon Economics and Epsilon Life Sciences

Vault’s Verdict

Insiders at Epsilon Economics and Epsilon Life Sciences rave about their firm’s culture. They describe it as collegial and supportive, with everyone working to help each other excel and management that’s happy to provide guidance and answer questions. The firm has no set limit on vacation time, allows remote work, requires limited travel, and offers generous parent leave.

The firm strongly encourages internal growth and development. Each analyst goes through initial training and mentoring in the course of client projects is commonplace. Analysts are frequently promoted to senior analysts after two years, then promoted again to associates in another two years. The firm’s base salaries are market and lockstep at each level, eliminating unconscious bias in pay, and year-end bonuses are above market. Additional bonuses for billing more than 40 hours a week, working weekends, and holidays are also available.

Insiders say that employee morale at Epsilon Economics and Epsilon Life Sciences is high, driven by a growing business development pipeline and strong leadership at the top of the firm. Leadership provides insights into the firm’s finances every month.

Employee Reviews

Firm Culture

• “The firm is great with ensuring mentorship opportunities, and the culture is such that it’s easy to reach out to colleagues and management with any questions about opportunities, training, and guidance.”
• “Collegial environment, very supportive culture. Flexible work hours and flexible time off policy.”
• “The firm has a fantastic culture! It’s very collegial, collaborative, and genuinely supportive. Everyone is both kind and hardworking, which results in a motivating environment. Plenty of social events. The unlimited PTO policy and emphasized respect for personal time, contributes significantly to a healthy work-life balance. There is also no required travel, which makes scheduling and work consistency much easier. You can also work from home if needed.”
• “EE and ELS have a great work culture. Everyone is kind and respectful yet also highly motivated to excel and perform at the highest level.”

Quality of Life

• “There’s no set limit on vacation policy, and the firm doesn’t think it needs to intervene on one’s personal life and time off requirements. Also, the nature of our work doesn’t require much travel. However, it’s consulting so sometime the hours can be longer around deadlines.”
• “Firm is extremely flexible and accommodating to those with a new family. Extremely generous paternal leave and flexibility when on-ramping back into work. As with all consulting, sometimes client demands and external deliverables are paramount and sometimes that means working long hours to meet a deadline.”
• “As an entrepreneurial environment with individual accountability valued, we are able to manage our lives and our time around our clients and our families. Very little administrative work that gets in the way of balance.”
• “Flexibility to work from home when needed and nice perks that make coming into the office easier and more fun (gym membership, catered lunched, snacks, happy hours, commuter benefits). Being a smaller firm means you always have to be on call, but it usually balances out.”

Career Development

• “Firm is very open to its employees exploring areas of interest and paving their own path of subject matter expertise to serve clients. There is good knowledge sharing across colleagues and a fairly robust formal training program for new hires. However, a lot of the information-sharing and training is done through joining client projects and a good mentorship culture.”
• “The mentoring at Epsilon is great. I like my managers and feel supported by them. Promotions are relatively rigid, where analysts become senior analysts after two years, and typically senior analysts become associates after another two years.”
• “Colleagues are extremely generous with client referrals. There’s a strong push for internal organic growth with more experienced colleagues really encouraging the next generation and looking for opportunities to share with them. A challenge is that the career trajectory requires transitioning from an analytical role to role that also involves sales, which can be uncomfortable for those that are not accustomed to marketing themselves.”
• “Initial training offered to all analysts. Further training is at the discretion of the employee. There is a formal advisor program for analysts.”

Compensation

• “Salaries are at market and lockstep within the company for people at the same level with the same experience to avoid unconscious bias; bonuses are above market and based on individual work.”
• “By far, the best part of my compensation is the two-tier bonus system. Analysts/associates receive a year-end bonus, but we also receive a secondary bonus per hour when we bill over 40 hours in a week or work on weekends/firm holidays (essentially overtime pay). As I understand, this is incredibly rare in the consulting sector and makes me feel very appreciated.”
• “Six months maternity leave fully paid with the option to take additional time off up to a year. Every single person in the firm has equity in the company, including our receptionist. However, sometimes the firm can be overstaffed, which eats into profits/bonus pool. It’s hard to get this perfect because you want to be prepared for busy deadlines.”
• “The firm pays for memberships for the gym onsite. They also provide healthy snacks in the office and have a monthly wellness initiative that has health and wellness challenges and informational newsletters.”

Inclusion

• “Our CEO and leadership team takes equality seriously and is personally passionate about the cause, including financially contributing to several LGBTQ+ organizations. All men and women in the same position in the firm are paid the same and there is no pay inequality.”
• “Epsilon is an inclusive place where everyone is made to feel supported. The firm has lots of women in leadership positions and managerial roles, in what I understand is a very male-dominant field. I think everyone gets access to interesting work and promotion opportunities, regardless of their identity/background.”
• “We foster a welcoming and flexible environment and have had very successful women in the firm (including our CFO and COO). We have partnerships with LGBTQ organizations and foster a welcoming environment for LGBTQ colleagues. We have been trying to diversify our recruiting from different schools to get a wider diversity of backgrounds and ethnicities.”
• “For a small firm, there is a wide range of diverse individuals in leadership, staff and operational roles. The firm maintains a DEI committee that explores educational opportunities and thematic initiatives (e.g., pride month).”

Business Outlook

• “The firm has a solid foundation and strong leadership from the managing directors. They’ve been putting more focus on business development, which is positive for the firm’s long-term growth and stability. Because the firm is smaller, revenue can be highly dependent on the managing directors’ ability to bring in work. Sometimes there are slower periods when work is lighter and busier periods when work is piling up, which can impact workload and overall momentum. However, the continued push toward business development is helping address this and should create more consistent opportunities over time.”
• “Employee morale is great, and we have very experienced leaders at the top of the firm. There are some inherent risks in an industry where most business comes from the strength of an expert’s CV and connections, and that expert can choose to retire or move elsewhere. Still, I believe the firm has articulated a strong plan for growth in the next five years.”
• “Leadership is very open about its plans for the future. We also have insight into the firm’s finances (presented every month) so that we are a part of it.”
• “Firm has been growing at CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 20 percent. Poised to expand significantly over the next few years.”

Hiring Process

• “Ideal candidate is someone with strong analytical skills (agnostic to major) from a tier 1 university (most of the analysts in Chicago are from Northwestern or the University of Chicago) who has high attention to detail and is enthusiastic about work and is ambitious.”
• “Usually we do a phone screen, followed by office visit and then follow-up call/meeting with firm leadership. For senior level hires, we also require a business case. The ideal candidate is also someone who can easily interact with others.”
• “We’re looking for enthusiastic and curious people who are analytically inclined and want to be challenged in their work. For those who want to take on responsibility early on in their career, there are a lot of opportunities to do so at Epsilon. We typically have a phone interview, then a round of in-person interviews at our offices (logistics permitting) with around four to five  mid- to senior-level people.”
• “It’s a rigorous process, and one that can be fast and slow depending on the candidate. Communication is paramount, and the recruiting team maintains an open dialogue with candidates so there are no surprises or opportunity for confusion.”

Interview Questions

• “Interview questions for analysts are mostly behavioral- and background-based. The written question prompt picks a topical subject (like the opioid crises) and asks the candidate to evaluate economic harms to certain parties (such as local governments) to assess how the candidate thinks about causation.”
• “How would you assess monetary damages to local cities and governments who have been impacted by the opioid crisis? People need to research and create a presentation on this to present on the day of their onsite interview.”
• “Explain how you would figure out the value of a patent on a smart phone that improves image quality captured by cameras by 10 percent relative to previous phone generations.”
• “How have you handled a challenging situation? How do you approach conflict? What interests you in this type of work/why did you apply to this firm?”