Company: PwC
Date: 2008-06-12
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

Work/life balance
Pros: It is a good place to get a well rounded knowledge of accounting standards and applications.   It’s also a good place to work if you want to get a behind the scenes look at corporate America.  Furthermore, you get exposed to various industries as well as different types of and size of companies.
Cons: It is very difficult to maintain a healthy work/life balance.  In an effort to increase “efficiency”, each year the budgeted hours allotted for a job are decreased significantly from the prior year.  In the mean time, more and more work is required of the staff auditors due to increased scrutiny by the PCAOB (govt) and other applicable regulators.  This leads to staff eating hours as they cannot meet the unreasonable budget, which means that staff are working longer and longer hours that are unreported, leading to an unhealthy work environment.  Apparently it used to be that staff would work long hours during busy season, but then there would be an off time during slow summer months.  This however is no longer true.  Due to Sec 404 and other added regulations, staff are working busy season hours through out the year.