Company: PwC
Date: 2015-07-22
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

Terrible work experience but big value on resume
Pros: Good career opportunity once you move outside
Despite the majority of work is very dull, some of the skills you obtain are useful, like managing huge and multiple workloads, accounting&tax knowledge
Clear growth opportunity - you can be promoted each 2-3 years with significant salary increase
Cons: Huge overloads which is caused not only by real workload but also very ineffective processes, eg constant multitasking, multiple supervisors or people from other deparments which ping you every 5 minutes making it impossible to concentrate on particular tasks. Often I could start work normally and concentrate only after 7-8 pm. I never faced such pressure and overload even at top Big3 strategy consulting company to which I further moved. 7am-12pm working hour flled with a lot of stress was quite a norm
Very ineffective collaboration between different department - sometimes I spent 3-4 hours per day only chasing people begging them to grant me 5-10 minutes of their time, at the same time being pressed by my own supervisor, and I couldnt bill this time anywhere. There're many bottlenecks in the system, eg there's only one VAT deparments with few consultants on VAT which shoud approve advices and audit letters received from all tax depatments (>500 people).  This constant chasing and begging experience is the most horrible part of my whole work experience, luckily never faced it anywhere else
Tough management style - managers who achieved the result at any price were very common and moreover were constantly promoted. Thus, I faced bulling, tough criticizm, insulting very regulary. And, again, never in my further consulting experience I have experienced such attitude
The work in the tax department is very routine by itself, including tax audits and tax advices done by standard templates. Might be a plus though for people who prefer to do the same thing most of the time
Overall, leaving PwC has been one of the happiest event in my life.