Company: EY
Date: 2011-03-24
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former

Fulfilling, challenging and fast-paced
Pros: The people are incredibly talented and the opportunity for varied work is endless.  I spent time at a variety of clients in the Northeast and had customer-facing experience from the get-go.  Salary and benefits are competitive and flexibility for outside projects is readily available (within reason).  I don't think I could have gone to another industry and gotten as much responsibility and experience so early on.  I am very grateful to have had the opportunity work there right out of college.  It's a wonderful place to start a career.
Cons: While work-life balance is the ultimate goal, you are ultimately at the mercy of project deadlines.  Late nights, weekends and  last minute fire drills (even ones that could have been easily prevented) are numerous.  A good team is key and with limited resources, you don't typically have a choice in picking who you work for.  If you are on the compliance side of engagement work, you might have a more routine lifestyle but more mundane work.  The more exciting work will most likely have you traveling and working very long hours.  There are constant trade-offs.  Masters degrees outside Accounting are not generally monetarily-supported either and for those of us looking to pursue MBAs, we generally have to choose between a part-time degree with little to no outside life for 3 years (since between long hours at work and evening/weekend classes, it's hard to have a balanced personal life) or leaving the company altogether to pursue a full-time program.