PwC reviews

Public accounting is pretty miserable work. Little benefit to society comes from the work. It's a cynical view, but I view this profession (public accounting: audit/tax) as a regulatory or cost-of-doing-business tax paid in order to get capital to do REAL things in the economy. So, it's not often that I get to go home at the end of the day feeling like I've contributed to society. On a more material level, the benefits are horrendous. The best medical plan for a family is >$500/month and still doesn't include a co-pay for emergency room visits (a change they slid in from the prior year's plan without warning even when raising premiums $100/month). So, stitches for my toddler cost me $700 (after deductible and 10% of the remaining balance) even though I'd spent around $6k in premiums. No Roth 401k like some Big 4 competitors. I don't understand why there aren't more of these. And contribution match is laughable - 0.25% of what you contribute, up to 4% of my income. Pretty standard for Big 4, in that 401k are very bad because they expect you to leave anyway after a few years.

Everything else. I mean, EVERYTHING else. Work/Life balance is preached, but I've never seen anything resembling it. An alarming number of my coworkers have been laid off for a company that "isn't laying people off in this economy" Low pay for what we do and the hours we put in Here's an example of how much sense their compensation system makes: When promoted, the rate they charge my clients for my time increased 50%, my pay increased 5%. Everything is contradictory. You are rewarded and punished for working more hours. You are rewarded and punished for being honest (mostly punished). You are rewarded and punished for speaking your mind in "anonymous feedback sessions". You are rewarded and punished for doing good work. You have to work something like 12 hours a day, but can often only charge about 6 or 7 of those, meaning you're underutilized and look like a slacker. You will receive negative performance reviews for this. The "critically-acclaimed" employee performance review is a clever way to cover that the partners end up playing favorites in the end anyway. The partners have no respect for you. The US leadership team uses the company's intranet site to brag about how they like to vacation in exotic places, spend time with their families, and talk about their hobbies. Meanwhile the staff has no time for hobbies as we work far too many hours, we are forced to use our vacation time to pay for the "firm-wide shutdown" at the holidays in order to save the partners admin money, and I've had a coworker who was told that she doesn't belong at PwC because she requested to not travel overseas for a month at a time because she had to take care of her 1.5 year old son. Let's just say, there's a HUGE double standard, and little to no respect for the staff shown from leadership. All the good employees have the good sense to leave, leaving only the people who can't do any better. So that "Pro" I mentioned about good coworkers doesn't last long. For people considering working here, just know this: The people on your campus telling you how great of a place this is to work, don't actually work here. They only do recruiting, meaning, they don't even know what hell it is to actually work here. I could go on much longer, but I have far too much work to do, and I'd like to leave work at 1am instead of 2am...