Company: EY
Date: 2020-12-23
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Confirmed

Valuable career learning and development, but at extremely high-cost
Pros: I started as a heavy Senior 3, quickly was promoted to Manager and then Senior Manager. At the end of my tenure, I was pretty much the industry equivalent of a tech executive. Lots of very difficult engagements with the opportunity to design and deliver technology transformations at a large scale, which make you incredibly valuable once you enter industry.
Cons: The reality is EY heavily over-works its employees. If you drive your car at the race track every day, your engine will fail and will require massive repairs. Race track miles are not the same as highway miles or even city miles. Same with EY, you are burning at a much higher rate than normal, and most people burn out. Attrition rates are mind numbingly bad, I joined with 40 people in my peer group. By my fifth year, only two people remained from that group, myself and another colleague. I typically worked 50+ hours on every engagement, and threw in substantial time into business development and other EY internal activities. The performance ratings are totally arbitrary and inconsistent from group to group, and even within a group. The promotion process is highly political and does not promote the best talent. Those who scream sour grapes have to realize I was promoted twice in 4 years. The number of flat out unethical actions taken by senior leadership I observed in my tenure were also astonishing. Sometimes, I wonder how so many people have a high-regard for the firm with their insider knowledge. Perhaps, stockholm syndrome.