Company: PwC
Date: 2020-11-10
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Mixed bag - depends on your priorities
Pros: - work with big clients on impressive deals 
- reputable and good exit opportunities because of the brand name
- fantastic training and network of support - people are clearly driven, clever and hard-working
 - opportunities to transfer to other lines of service via Transfer Window - lots of other professional services you could do at the Big 4, i.e. good options if you want to broaden your skillset.
Cons: - long hours for not enough compensation as opposed to competition or the industry. They are very aware that you are working for them because of the brand name and so know they can get away with offering mediocre compensation.
 - a 'look busy' all the time sort of culture and 'showing face' to clients by going to client site when not necessary
 - they preach a lot about mental health and wellbeing at the firm, but its the long hours and hard deadlines that's the main cause of the issue. They will sometimes accept unrealistic deadlines set by the client, expecting you to work crazy hours to meet it when, in reality, they can just negotiate better in favour of our teams.
 - they encourage you try other roles and expand skillset but if you tried to manage your own diary, there isn't that much flexibility in terms of which clients you can be on (luck of the draw sometimes) and whether you can work on other lines of service temporarily/on secondments.