Company: PwC
Date: 2014-12-13
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

PwC Consulting - does not lead in quality and impact; but better work/life balance
Pros: - Generally, much better at managing work/life balance.  Hours are not as terrible, when compared to the norm at top tier consulting firms.  Those that stay in the office past 7pm are generally seen as workaholics.
- Nice people.  Down to earth.  You will make friends there
- Lots of opportunities to shape your own career and explore a wide variety of business problems, across both functions and industries.
- Healthy focus on general training and people development (e.g. core consulting skills such as communication, people management, etc... not as much on technical / content-oriented training)
Cons: - Too commercially focused; not enough focus on truly building the quality of talent, approach / methods, and maximising the impact and value delivered for each and every client, on each and every project
- As a result, junior staff are more interested in knowing the "right partners", and "selling work" to get ahead.  Few people are actually truly and primarily focused on the quality of the work, on the impact they can have on clients, and on building a practice that is based on market-leading thought leadership, insight, and capabilities
- I do hope this changes with the acquisition of Strategy&.  Though, PwC has struggled to (a) retain, and (b) build on the strengths of other recent acquisitions
- Lots of people get disillusioned by the promotion process.  Not at all transparent, and clearly not merit-based.  As a result, the really good, talented people lose patience and leave.  Those that thrive in a much more "it's about who you know" environment (generally, content-light) do well.