Company: PwC
Date: 2016-06-28
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Welcome to PwC, where your best isn't good enough
Pros: The people that work at PwC are top notch individuals that strive to perform at the highest level possible.  People in management positions are extremely knowledgeable and friendly. I'm glad to have worked at PwC because of the people I met. If you can get through the associate and senior associate levels, there is a lot of potential here.
Cons: People that would have been a super star in any other setting are viewed as average at PwC.  Everyone is competing against everyone else.  They literally send out a report every month to every individual in the Atlanta office showing everyone's utilization and hours worked without masking any names.  Everyone at PwC is an overachiever because you have to be an overachiever to be hired by PwC.  Being an overachiever is not a bad thing. The problem starts when you are judged versus people that have no problem working 14 hours a day 6 days a week.  Not every client is the same.  One client's information can be harder to sort and figure out than another client's financials.  Those people that are working 14 hours a day on an easier client can log extremely impressive hours while you're stuck working the same hours on a more difficult client and are forced to eat your hours so that you stay on budget which makes your utilization fall below the threshold.  Once you're placed on a client you are dealing with that client for many months at a time but because their information takes longer to figure out than what was budgeted, you end up on the bottom of the utilization sheet. Management doesn't really care even though the utilization rate is what your performance is judged on and what your compensation is usually based on. If a partner sells a project for a low fee and it ends up taking longer than budgeted for, you're screwed from the utilization stand point as an associate and no one really cares.  My breaking point was when I couldn't make it to a store before it closed at 9 pm for several weeks because I was stuck at work.  It can definitely feel cut throat all the while everyone is smiling and pretending that they're having a great day. Forcing these hours should be illegal.