Company: PwC
Date: 2015-06-26
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Change is Needed
Pros: The social culture is fantastic and is equivalent to that of a Tech company in SOME respects along with the fact that you will work with relatively intelligent and A personality people.

Training is above average and they provide you with tools to succeed in your exams at least in the past.  Not sure about the new CPA program as all the new employees will be guinea pigs for the program.

It provides a great brand name recognition on your resume and thus is an easy transition into industry.  Also there are solid opportunities to transition into a Consulting or Tax however YOU must seek it out as they won't actively promote Xlos transfers.

The firm really teaches you to work hard, be pro active and problem solve on the fly.  

If you are good with maneuvering politics you can get ahead quite easily, thus being good at being cut throat will help your career and offer you some financial incentives.

Generally the Pay raises from year to year for the first 3-4 years are good as long as you are not held back from a relatively.

If you want to be challenged there is a great opportunity to do well and do many different things if you like.

There are really good international opportunities that offer some solid financial incentives to work in different countries and allow you to expand your experience base.
Cons: Although the firm promotes work-life balance they do not actively promote any of the "Worklife" policies they have set into play.  These policies are set in play generally to meet Top employer criteria for annual awards.  In general it is shunned to take advantage of the work life balance policies IN BUSY SEASON.  Thus these policies are just a political and face saving stunt that they try to pull on employees.

Depending on your situation you may end up doing work that is not in your interest or tedious or both.  Its really a roll of the dice sometimes with these situations to start especially if your mentor/coach doesn't care much about actually seeing you progress.  As this firm is quite cut throat at the upper echelons you coach may just see you as a placeholder in his/her career.

Management plays these games where they ask the staff for honest advice however the honest advice is never implemented.  The reason is the simple answer to all of PWC's problems or any big 4 is to pay staff more for their work however this would mean partners would have to take a pay cut.  Of which none of them want because the only reason they became partners is because of the money (not all but generally).  So you ask yourself why would they want to share?

Recently (within the past 2 years) they reduced the paygrid for associates-seniors because the partners decided they needed to maintain their pay.  Thus instead of the partners taking a pay cut for not doing their jobs properly and getting enough business they have cut the pay of lower level staff.

Additionally when staff inquire about small cost of living raises (2%) they are told on the compensation call that these are built in the raises.  However the raises are due to being promoted to the next level each year not because there is a COLA built in.  This is the type of nonsense they speak to their employees expecting people not to understand.  It is ironic that they want to hire the best of the best yet treat us like children to try to save Face from the realities.

Favoritism is rampant in the firm,  There is only a set allocation of high performance raises they give to employees and thus even if your performance is up to par with a "high performance employee" if you are not part of the favorite group you may just receive the "average" employee raise.  This obviously causes turmoil as certain hard working employees are left out of the sand box based on political favoritism.

They have started to hire Contract Seniors to save on cashflow and money to manager associates during busy season.  This is part of their cost reduction plan to maintain earnings and half due to the fact that none of the seniors are staying for manager because the sentiment is that its not worth it in the long run.  This on the inside doesn't look too well when management is blatantly replacing employees with temporary workers.  This doesn't exactly show loyalty to their hardworking lower level staff members.

Additionally, many people that do leave are unhappy due to the fact that management loves to make short term promises to get jobs done but cannot follow through with many of them.  This leads to resentment and additional departures that are just bad business as these former employees are set to become the controllers and CFO's of the future.

Many of the former benefits and perks are being scaled back such as free lunches at training sessions and rookie events are being cost cut just so the partners can "maintain" their earnings.  It's a never ending spiral of greed and incompetence that drives upper management to make decisions that only help themselves.  

There is this mundane function of recording hours on jobs to manage WIP and recovery however there tends to be pressure to eat hours and under record the time worked.  If you record too many hours then you are just being INEFFICIENT not that the job is understaffed or poorly managed or the fee is too low.

The trouble PWC Assurance is finding is they are in the middle of a transition of generations and less and less staff are willing to sacrifice their lifestyles for a company that has clearly shown a lack of interest or investment in their own staff.

These Big 4 just ain't loyal no more.