Company: Deloitte
Date: 2016-10-10
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

Opens the door, but at what cost?
Pros: Networking and career opportunities are very good at Deloitte.  You'll be in direct contact with people in pretty high places and have a chance to turn on the charm.  But approach this with caution--if you don't stay long enough to make a good resume impact, it's difficult to take advantage of.

Very good benefits.  Particularly getting paid to do your CPA (TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS!!!), free CPE, free professional memberships, Health/Fitness subsidy, etc.  The PTO sounds nice, but I was very, very rarely able to take a day off and left with nearly 300 hours in accrued vacation after 2.5 years.

The corporate credit card and company phone were nice luxuries that I would like to have back.

Depending on your situation (and luck), scheduling can make it easy to work from home when you're not scheduled to a client.
Cons: My quality of life was at an all-time low.  Severely overworked, underpaid (considering the expectations), and never appreciated.  You think that just getting to the next level will help, until you realize that the next level comes with other pressures that are often worse.

Suicide was a frequent thought at Deloitte.  I am a different, and much happier, person since I left.  If I were to do it over again, I wouldn't have put up with it for as long as I did.

I feel that it's important to specify that I understood the "churn and burn" nature of Deloitte before starting, I just never thought that sticking it out for a couple of years would be as acutely miserable as it was.

A couple of practical notes: you don't get a lot of hands-on, transferable skills in Audit.  For example, it was a constant refrain throughout my job search to tell companies that my only ERP experience was watching/documenting others do it.

Also, I realized that I did not want to pursue classic Accounting, and had a pretty hard time switching to Finance.  I found this surprising, since it can be argued that Audit is quite cross-disciplinary.

Carrying your office in a shoulder bag wore on me more than expected.  I now appreciate a bona fide desk and dual monitors daily.