Company: PwC
Date: 2015-11-17
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Good place to work for the right type of person
Pros: PwC provides its employees with incredibly broad exposure to clients and industries, including most of the world's most prestigious companies. It's pretty cool knowing the most detailed business information about some of the most highly respected and admired American businesses. 

Training and support structure is very robust and there is never a time where you have nowhere to turn for answers. Coaching is very integrated into the PwC experience and you always have a upward place to comfortably turn for answers, advice, and guidance. Workplace technology is generally very good and IT provides state of the art laptops and external displays for work. 

While monetary compensation is not the best, the benefits package is broad in other ways including full cell phone with unlimited data, unlimited sick time, generous vacation and extended firm holidays, sabbaticals, maternity/paternity leave, and insurance options (including a very convenient legal option). Promotion and pay is highly structured and predictable (and therefore stable). Jobs are essentially 100% secure, unless you make some serious, serious mistakes consistently. Exit options are very strong as well, as long as you want to do something related after exit.

One thing that is surprisingly good is flexibility. You generally have a set amount of work to complete each day/week. I've never had an issue leaving whenever I wanted for doctor's appointments, concerts, sporting events, or Flexed Fridays as long as my work was completed.
Cons: The work is incredibly boring and repetitive, especially in your first 5-7 years. I did not study an accounting or MIS related field and coming to work at PwC was a huge mistake. The firm has recently made a push into recruiting in other fields such as Economics, Mathematics, Engineering, and Computer Science but frankly the job has not come along enough to provide valuable and interesting work to employees from these backgrounds. HR and recruiting like to pitch the consulting aspect of our job to students, but we're really not consultants, unless you're working in the Advisory LOS. At the end of the day, I am an auditor through and through, regardless of working in risk assurance. 

During busy season, the hours can be very long (75+) which can be frustrating because upper management is always communicating how hard they're working to line up enough busy season resources. The pay is also not that great considering how hard we are expected to work and the challenging and stressful nature of the work itself. Associates often run budgets on engagements and are aware of what PwC is charging the client for their work. Associates normally cost about $180-$250/hour for the client. It's almost insulting to take home only about 10% of that amount or less per hour.

The firm culture is not positive and most people seem to be very unhappy. I don't think a single day goes by where I don't hear someone joking about how much they hate their job or fantasizing about leaving. When someone does leave, it's the envious talk of the office. I think at the end of the day, the nice office, decent pay and benefits, and highly structured and dependable promotion scheme trap people into staying. 

85% of my client contacts have been awful, miserable people. This work is highly client facing and I spend about 30% of my days interacting with contacts. I have found that most people automatically dislike auditors and it seems a lot of people who work in private compliance and risk are just generally disagreeable and miserable people. I can't tell you how many rude emails and phone calls I've had to smile through and endure.

Exit opportunities, while strong in the industry, are weak elsewhere. If you intend to leave PwC and the accounting/audit industry, you had better do it no later than 2-3 years after starting or you will find yourself trapped.

Additionally, my experience with PwC has been HIGHLY clique-y. Managers, directors, and partners quickly establish favorites amongst the staff (generally attractive, athletic, white males) regardless of actual work ability and intelligence. These favorites then get staffed on the best and most interesting work, or the work with the largest expense allowances (think $150 dinners). The nature of this work is then positively reinforcing allowing the favorites to be promoted more quickly. It seems the best way to succeed in my department is not actually working hard, but excelling at convincing others how hard you're working. Upper management is essentially 95% WASP-y white males who complain consistently about millennials, rather than trying to create a workplace consistent with today's working generation.

PwC recently implemented a "Professional Framework" by which performance is evaluated according to 5 characteristics (Whole Leadership, Business Acumen, Global Acumen, Technical Skills, Relationships) Global acumen is essentially worthless. "Performance differentiators" highlight unique contributions to engagements. During each engagement, you receive a "Snapshot" detailing each of these categories being below, partially at, at, partially at, or at next level. These snapshots are reviewed during your Career Roundtable (which you are not present for) and this determines your promotion and pay. This is what bothers me most about PwC. Most engagement staffing comes down to luck or favoritism. If you're placed on new work, it is relatively easy to stand out and contribute substantially to work improvement and earn performance differentiators. If you're placed on a "bread and butter" client, for which we've been providing the same service for 20 years, there is essentially nothing left to improve. During your Career Roundtable, the upper management evaluate your snapshots and essentially assign you as a "1," "2," or "3," with 1 being the highest performing. About 1 in 30 employees is a "1." This then determines your pay increase. The Professional Framework was implemented to make performance, promotion, and pay more transparent. But at the Career Roundtable, upper management can still voice their favorites and override the Snapshots to assign 1s, 2s, and 3s. In my mind, this makes the Snapshots irrelevant. As long as there is a human component in the ranking assignment, I don't view this as a fair or equitable process. Best chance at promotion? Make sure you can talk football/hockey/baseball and smalltalk with old white men.