Company: EY
Date: 2016-03-11
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

growth oriented if you're willing to give up your soul
Pros: 1) Highly growth oriented and plenty of learning opportunities. You will be automatically promoted each year unless you majorly screw up something. This can be a bad sign as well, covered in "cons" section
2) Brand is recognized everywhere; looks great on resumes
3) Average compensation and benefits, but nothing to write home about
4)  CPA exams and study materials as well as AICPA membership fees are covered by the firm
Cons: 1) Non-existent work-life balance and NO OVERTIME PAY. In non-busy season audit line I worked until 7PM each day (~60 hour weeks). In busy season the earliest I ever got out was 10 PM , which includes eating dinner and lunch in front of my laptop. Most people are not so lucky, especially in FSO audit, for they go past midnight every night and work on Saturdays. In Tax you can expect to have a summer busy season in addition to the regular one. All of this for no over time pay. I calculated how much I earned per hour and ended up making very close to minimum wage (this was for the San Francisco office).

2) Unpredictable scheduling: Whatever engagement you're assigned to is complete crapshoot and up to the will of the scheduler. You can be assigned to the worst client and be stuck there for years unless you have connection to higher powers (read: senior managers and partners). The traveling is glamorized in the recruiting process but you will mainly be stuck in audit rooms and hotels in your times there, sometimes in the middle of nowhere. An audit room in Hawaii looks pretty identical to an audit room in Ohio. 

3) As mentioned in #1 in the "pros" section everyone is guaranteed automatic promotions (because they are always desperately low on people) but this also means those who barely got a 3 in their performance review will be the new senior or manager leading the engagement. Often times newly promoted people will be completely clueless as they don't even have a chance to go to trainings because they're slammed on multiple engagements

4) This might only apply to audit: but the nature of the job is value-subtracting. Clients do not like auditors and view them as a necessary evil and expense. It is a demoralizing and thankless job. 

5) Partners are treated like gods and staffs and lower seniors are treated as scums of the earth, who are the subjects of all blames no matter who messed up. Interestingly, the interns are treated very well in an dishonest attempt to sell them the kool-aid.

6) A lot of hand-wavy stuff goes on in the audit room. It is scary to think that the fate of the financials of some of the biggest companies rest on the shoulders of fresh college grads, but with the staffing issues and seniors and managers being pulled in different engagements they barely have time to do a detailed review of staff's work. Consequently many sign off without really checking the work.

Overall, audit is a great learning opportunity for anyone starting out in the accounting/finance career path and I would recommend getting at least 1 year in. People who do manage to stay more than 2-3 years generally attend plenty of happy hours to drown out their misery and/or have a great support network, since it's a very dry, demoralizing and soulless field of work.