Company: PwC
Date: 2008-06-11
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former

Great place to work AFTER you leave.
Pros: Working at PwC helped increase my confidence and advanced my career in unimaginable ways.  I doubled my salary within 2 years of leaving the firm and will never fear being unemployed as most companies will automatically hire you if you have Big 4 experience.

The people are amazing at the firm as well.  It was a great experience working with the best and brightest minds.  Having so many driven, highly intelligent people around pushed my skills to new levels which greatly surprised me.  I continually learned something new from my peers and management up to my very last day at the firm.  Aside from work, everyone I met at the firm was very interesting and made some great friends during my time there.
Cons: Expect long hours with below average compensation.  There is no 401k matching, slightly below average medical coverage and RBAP is a joke considering the majority of employees are burnt out and leave by their 2nd and 3rd years.

Being more capable than your peers results in much longer hours & pressure with minimal compensation increases.  I worked a couple hundred more overtime hours than my peers and was highly favored by my management, but only received a standard pay increase and roughly $1k more in bonuses than my peers.

The firm advertises "Work-Life Balance" and "Partners That Care" very aggressively to its staff, but it is far from the truth.  All work-life balance initiatives always have a caveat of "unless there's a business need."  Unfortunately, there is ALWAYS a business need to work longer hours, fly home on Friday evening (instead of Thursday) or not attend "fun" or "community service" days.  

As for partners, employees are nothing more than a number- they do not want high turnover rates in their practice as it affects their bonuses and add costs to train a new employee.  As long as you do not affect sales, all staff can be considered highly replaceable- if you quit, there will be hundreds of other people just as capable waiting to get a chance to get into the firm.  Thus, it's very understandable that partners do not care about their staff.