Company: PwC
Date: 2010-01-27
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current

Terrible
Pros: The people on your own level CAN be good people and enjoyable to work with

They pay for your CPA (although depending on what group you work in, you may not receive a bonus for passing it)
Cons: Everything else.  I mean, EVERYTHING else.

Work/Life balance is preached, but I've never seen anything resembling it.

An alarming number of my coworkers have been laid off for a company that "isn't laying people off in this economy"

Low pay for what we do and the hours we put in

Here's an example of how much sense their compensation system makes:  When promoted, the rate they charge my clients for my time increased 50%, my pay increased 5%.

Everything is contradictory.  You are rewarded and punished for working more hours.  You are rewarded and punished for being honest (mostly punished).  You are rewarded and punished for speaking your mind in "anonymous feedback sessions".  You are rewarded and punished for doing good work.

You have to work something like 12 hours a day, but can often only charge about 6 or 7 of those, meaning you're underutilized and look like a slacker.  You will receive negative performance reviews for this.

The "critically-acclaimed" employee performance review is a clever way to cover that the partners end up playing favorites in the end anyway.

The partners have no respect for you.

The US leadership team uses the company's intranet site to brag about how they like to vacation in exotic places, spend time with their families, and talk about their hobbies.  Meanwhile the staff has no time for hobbies as we work far too many hours, we are forced to use our vacation time to pay for the "firm-wide shutdown" at the holidays in order to save the partners admin money, and I've had a coworker who was told that she doesn't belong at PwC because she requested to not travel overseas for a month at a time because she had to take care of her 1.5 year old son.  Let's just say, there's a HUGE double standard, and little to no respect for the staff shown from leadership.

All the good employees have the good sense to leave, leaving only the people who can't do any better.  So that "Pro" I mentioned about good coworkers doesn't last long.

For people considering working here, just know this:  The people on your campus telling you how great of a place this is to work, don't actually work here.  They only do recruiting, meaning, they don't even know what hell it is to actually work here.

I could go on much longer, but I have far too much work to do, and I'd like to leave work at 1am instead of 2am...