Company: PwC
Date: 2010-12-21
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

Start your career, get the name on your resume, then get out before drinking too much Kool-Aid
Pros: - Work with very intelligent, motivated individuals
- Gain a broad range of experiences across many industries
- Experience many different work situations; makes you a rounder individual
- Work on high exposure projects / clients
- The name on the resume is truly a great thing; made finding a new job one of the easiest searches in my career
Cons: "Work/Life Balance" is this fun phrase senior managers desperately want you to believe if they repeat it to you over and over; fact of the matter is, it's basically nonexistent. While you are experiencing another "great opportunity" for your career traveling to some remote part of Kentucky 4 or 5 days a week for months on end, I certainly hope you don't plan on having any life in your hometown. It's a perfect fit for you if you are single, have no friends, and enjoy waking up at 4am every Monday morning to catch a flight for the rest of your life. 

Senior management is the loudest in the room when times are good, but when times are tough, suddenly they're secretive, secluded, and very hush-hush. They'll make all sorts of press releases and announcements when they're doing good deeds (not to mention a literal parade march up Market Street to hand-deliver a charitable donation to Mayor Nutter), but suddenly keep quiet and secretive when partaking in the not-so-good deeds, such as performing layoffs. 

It is a very 24/7 culture - be prepared, even while on vacation, to respond to your Blackberry. On that note, it's probably best to not even take vacation, because it counts directly against your utilization metrics for the year (a very important factor in your year-end reviews). 

Also be prepared to hear the phrase "high performance culture" in every communication you get from leadership. I used to think that this meant that I worked with the best and the brightest, and while that is true, I finally realized this was simply code for "white collar sweatshop". Pay seemed decent at first, but when all quality of life factors and 80 hour work weeks are considered, it is a pittance. Management will occasionally try to keep morale up or make you feel that you are being fairly rewarded by giving small bonuses or, more bizarrely, an iPad; I'm sorry, but an iPad doesn't really make up for the number of late nights, holidays, and weekends employees are expected to sacrifice in the "high performance culture" of PwC. 

Internet traffic is monitored by Ethics and Compliance, so never visit a blog like re: the auditors (or any site that would dare badmouth PwC) on a firm computer. While I never experienced this personally, several of my colleagues received threats from Ethics and Compliance for reading that blog.