Company: PwC
Date: 2015-06-20
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Investment in your career
Pros: Working in public accounting is a great way to open doors to the accounting/finance world. Many jobs specifically want Big 4 experience and PwC is consistently rated as the top of the Big 4. The PwC experience gets just a little bit better each year as leadership responds to the complaints of the minions in the Global People Survey and 18 million councils. In the right line of service/market team you can get immediate exposure to senior leadership at your clients which affords accelerated learning no industry or government job could ever offer. Also, the firm is huge on community service and provides a lot of support to those passionate about such causes.
Cons: Auditing sucks. The firm and PCAOB's commitment to audit quality forces you to care about stupid things. Work life balance is non-existent and don't let any kool-aid drinker tell you otherwise. It is however something you sadly learn to live with over the years. The pay at lower levels is not competitive with industry because the firm knows less than 50% of new hires will be around to make senior, and probably 90% won't stay until manager, so why shell out the money up front? Pay at the manager and above level is however quite competitive, especially considering the schedule flexibility.