Company: Deloitte
Date: 2015-01-24
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Good for career but job environment isn’t worth it
Pros: * Resume builder (it is a 'big 4' firm after all) 
* Staff and seniors are generally, although not always, a young group of  fun hardworking people
* Structured career progression (vs. industry)
* Depending on how many clients you have, you're not necessarily stuck at one place with the same group of people all year. So you get nice little changes of environment every few months or so (although that starts to go away at the Senior level)
* Vacation time is great. And you're able to use all of it, in the Portland office anyways. 
* Hours during the summer are good. Not too busy. 
* Portland office is a good size (big yet small) so you get to know most everyone
* Client base is diverse
Cons: * You definitely feel like a resource/body to be used by those above you sometimes 
* Management is not interested in creating a work environment for people to stay long term. Staying beyond 1-4 years is crazy even for someone who loves auditing and has great clients and support systems. It takes a super ambitious person who is willing to put up with a lot of downsides to stick it out and management is not interested in improving any of those downsides. From talking with my friends at other firms, this is pretty consistent across public accounting in general. 
* Pay is low and you can leave at almost every level for much higher pay for lower hours. Deloitte was the lowest paying of the larger firms in my city and raises/bonuses were poor. 
* Work-life balance during a big chunk of the year is awful
* Audit Quality and Audit efficiency are conflicting goals. So you often end up in no-win situations where there is really nothing you can do to make your partner/manager happy. 
* People eat time all of the time. Managers/Partners know but don't really care and reduce budgets every year and then hold staff to those budgets. 
* Office politics
* It feels like a pretty thankless job