Company: PwC
Date: 2009-07-02
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

Learn a lot, but the politics and work hours takes a lot out of you.
Pros: I definitely learned a lot at PricewaterhouseCoopers.  Not sure how their audit program is, but the learning programs they put in place for tax is pretty top notch in my opinion.  Also the knowledge sharing within groups is phenomenal.  You do have a lot of room for growth.  They are flexible with you in their own way.
Cons: These cons are probably for every big 4 firm out there.
-Management:  Again a whole big 4 problem.  The promotion system in a partnership setting is that first your an associate, then senior associate, then manager, senior manager etc.  The only problem is not all tax managers are good managers, and not all tax managers are good at tax.  So you have a promotion system there that is bound to make people part of management that shouldn't be part of management, but there great at tax.  They try to coach seniors etc to become good managers as well as tax people, however, I find a lot fall short on the management part.

Work/Life balance is horrendous.  It's not only the long hours, but many times I feel like I take the thought of work with me.  It comes to the point management etc put so much stress on you, you constantly are going through your "to-do" list and what happened at work and what will happen at work after you leave work.  It depends on your manager on that part.  I've had a mix of both.  Again it goes to the point that not all tax managers are good a managing.

Charging your time to certain clients.  I hate it.  Again, it's part of any partnership you go to, accounting/law etc.  I can spend half a day trying to charge my time.  Which stinks because you have a lot of work thrown on to you.  And when you don't have a lot of work, you don't know what to charge your time too.