Company: PwC
Date: 2020-01-03
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former

Horrible work place. Avoid if you are interested in your health.
Pros: Other than the parties and drink ups (for the employees to drown their sorrows in alcohol and momentarily forget their toxic work environment and which is the only thing the firm fancies spending money on), I'm genuinely struggling to find anything that has a whiff of positive in it.
Cons: - Super long working hours without regard for personal time/space or health. You can be denied leave or recalled from one. There was one incident where an employee collapsed while at a client's office  due to physical and mental fatigue and had to be rushed to hospital. The manager called him up while in hospital asking for a report on the client's job.
- A toxic culture of bullying, harassment, blackmail, bigotry, narcissism, ass-kissery, entrapment that's passed off as "a high pressure professional services environment" or "pressures of the professional services industry" or even more ridiculous "it's busy season".
- Compensation package is underwhelming despite the illusion portrayed by the brand and PR. Don't let the bespoke neatly pressed suits fool you. They're there to cover for the lack of joy, peace of mind and money in the lives of their wearers. The salaries can only attract unbeknownst graduates which explains the graduate trainee recruitment program every year. Oh, and they'll make sure to tell you how they have a USD 10,000 medical benefit which you are going to need because they'll work you to the hospital bed.
- The performance review exercise has nothing to do with performance reviewing and growth and everything to do with blackmail, witch hunt and forcing subordinates to bend to your will. It's mental abuse.
- Did I mention entrapment? They make it look like you have no other alternatives and actively sell to you bad decisions as part of the "amazing" perks. During orientation, one of the first things you get to hear about is the amazing car loan facility arrangement with their financial institution. Woo unto you if you fall for that in your first year.
- You never get to fully understand your role until you sign the contract and get started and more often than not it's an under utilization of your skills and qualifications. The graduate recruitment program targets anybody regardless of area of study without so much as explaining career prospects so you'll find engineers, actuarial scientists, computer scientists doing audit work which is dull and unbelievably "dirty" (which a former colleague once described as "glorified secretarial work"). Well, you'll get to hear a lot about how the PwC experience opens up a lot of possibilities, often with examples of individuals who are now CFOs and CEOs cited, which is akin to compensating creatives (models, artists) with exposure.