Company: EY
Date: 2012-07-03
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

A varied perspective
Pros: Obvious pros with the big 4 being more career opportunities, lots of opportunities to vary work with movements or secondments to other services, generally higher pay and it looks great on your CV should you ever decide the big 4 is not for you.

In addition to this I have found that as the big 4 can effectively cherry pick the employees who work for them all my colleagues are hard work and very smart making working in a team environment much more satisfying and great for realising and understanding solutions which may not have come to light otherwise.

The work attitude is much the same as in all practices with the simple fact that you will be expected to work late if the client requires the extra work but equally alot of effort goes in to making sure this isn't required. In fact I have not had to work past unless it was my own choice to do so since I started at Ernst & Young.
Cons: The negative to this being again the same as for all practices in that different clients have different demands and so while I have not had to work late hours friends of mine working on other teams for other clients have been required to work late to meet demanding deadlines.

I cant really think of any other negatives than this as my experience has genuinely been enjoyable as I have had the opportunity to work alongside some very talented individuals and make friends across the offices.