Company: PwC
Date: 2009-03-20
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current

Solid company to work for with plenty of opportunities and espically good place to start a career.
Pros: PwC offer a wide variety of career opportunities, particaulary in the UK. The firm activetly encourage trying out differen departments, which can range from traditional accouting to consultancy work to the internal operations of the company i.e. tutoring.
On the whole, all the staff are friendly and polite and make the effort to get on with everyone else. You get to work with a wide varitey of people across the firm and in the large offices (like the London offices) the social side can be very good.
The salary and benefits package is competitive and comparable to over firms doing similar work, and  there is good transparency about what other grades earn (so you will have a good idea of what kind of package you get each step up the ladder to partner).
Cons: Work life balance can sometimes be poor, and although not always overt, there is an expectation that you will pull out all the stops if required on a tight deadline. However, overtime in the London office does not tend to be more than 1-2hours a day on average (for someone witih 3-4 years experience). Also, alot fo the managers are good about giving you time off if you have worked particulary long hours on a job. In Transaction service (my line of work) hours tend to be lumpy, so you can have an intense two weeks, followed by a few days off). My understanding of other service ines like audit is that you have a more consistant level of work.
The direct relationship between work and reward is not always clear (although the performance related part of the salary is very small less than 10% at my level). As with alot of companies, you to build good networks in the firm to really get ahead.