Company: PwC
Date: 2011-04-22
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former

A Mixed Bag
Pros: (1) You can slap it on your resume that you worked for a Big 4
(2) One of the better paying jobs for recent accounting undergraduates with no experience
(3) CPA test fees are covered on your first try
(4) Many offices with many clients
Cons: (1) They make a big deal about getting your CPA, yet provide no time for you to actually study for it. A prevailing myth is that you have the slow summer season to study, but that only worked during the mortgage boom. Now auditors are working year-round audit hours (i.e. 10+ hrs/day) because so many companies are tanking and you're expected to be pulling these long shifts as well as spend any minimal free time you have to study for a license that may or may not get you a promotion depending on how many manager butts you've kissed.

(2) If you're too good of a worker, management likes to keep you on their teams. You may voice your opinions and desires on where you want your career to go, but basically if you're not a manager or above your opinions are not considered. They will shuck you wherever they want you and HR tells you to just suck it up. The only times I've seen it work in favor of an associate is if they have a manager coach that is willing to fight senior management for you. Of course the majority of them are too worried about their appearance in front of sr. mgrs and partners and would rather just give you the HR PC line "Just keep fighting".

(3) Compensation after the first year is not on par with the level of work, responsibility and quality you're expected to provide the client and the company. You may be the best experienced associate worker, but that doesn't mean you'll get paid more than the slacker associate; it just means that management will give you more work than the other guy. Specifically, in 2005 PwC was handing out double digit pay raises around 20%. Associates then started at $49K; thus even if the employee was slacker he still made $58K by the time 2006 rolled around. Starting in 2006, the market started to slow down; new associates were starting at $51K, but because they were new they were thrown into the "newbie" bin and only got 8% raises. However, slacker joe still got a 10% raise. Thus the end of that year, you as the 2nd yr associate would make $55K, while the 3rd yr associate who wasn't pulling his weight made $63K. The new year rolls around and management sees that you're a much better worker than the 3rd year; they end up doling out to you all of the difficult assignments while slacker joe gets the easy ones as he's less likely to mess them up. You're busting your butt for a measly $55K (which, after tax, only translated to a $100 increase in your paycheck and was only about $50 higher than the new associate pay), whereas slacker joe gets to leave early and still make $200 more than you per paycheck. - This is a true scenario, not  a hypothetical situation. I'm not sure if they've fixed this now, but anyone who got hired in 2006 and 2007 got screwed  big time with wages and raises.