Company: PwC
Date: 2013-09-19
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Confirmed

Good place to work, but beware the glass ceiling.
Pros: There are amazing opportunities for diverse work and as many training courses in order to further your own development and education as you can possibly wish for.  For the most part the people are smart, very hard working, willing to give credit where credit is due, and thankful for everyone's hard work and long hours.  The experience gained can be invaluable, and I would recommend it to any accounting graduate.  Compensation is also very good, though as with almost all jobs, health insurance benefits are decreasing.
Cons: Favoritism is the name of the game, it determines promotions, client assignments, compensation, and everything else.  Those who are marked as favorites are also almost exclusively white, and generally male.  And while diversity statistics for the firm as a whole look pretty good, take a look at the number of minorities or women who actually make it to partner, it's a sad state of affairs.  There is also discrimination against those without children, people who have children leave at 5 pm every day with no comment, while those of us without are expected to pick up the slack and are looked at very critically if we leave at the same time.  It's not that advancement doesn't happen for minorities and women, it's just that it happens slower, and requires a great deal more effort than that put in by others.

Hours are long and hard, that's no big shock for a public accounting firm, and the firm puts more emphasis on working more hours than working smart hours.  So there are people pulling all nighters when they would accomplish more by getting some rest and looking at things with fresh eyes.  Logic like this is almost completely ignored, but I think that's more of issue across the business world (and especially in Financial Services) rather than just a PwC problem.