PwC reviews

- If offered a job. REJECT. - Aim High 2020 is a joke. Attended a half day seminar to explain mission statement ‘Aim High’. Sat listening to Brian O’Driscoll for 3 hours and came away none the wiser as to what we were aiming for. A grand slam we all joked. - Operate is a failing business, I put down to management (more follows). PwC are crimping employee benefits and restricting expenses. Namely due to losing contacts and trying to save money to maintain year on year ‘growth’. - Rapid expansion has created a team in excess of 1000. Most of the time you won’t be on a project you will be on the ‘bench’. Which used to be an actual bench but now if you’re lucky represents a hot desk if you can find one. - No structure in company. Never told how long your project or engagement will last, where you will go next. Impossible to plan your own personal life. Very lonely existence will follow acceptance of a job offer. - No professional training opportunities outside of Prince2. No progression opportunities or ability to transfer to other parts of PwC or other office locations. Complete lack of flexibility. - If you are based away from your base office you will be placed into accommodation, sharing with someone you have never met. This accommodation will be changed often so DO NOT get comfortable. - Management team who can’t organise anything. They will regularly ask for repeated information such as your Mobile number despite the management sitting next to each other and it being available on your employee profile and signature. Note: This is a work mobile number THEY gave me and has happened to numerous people on my project. - No expense structure when working away from base office. Have to guess. Sometimes they get approved sometimes they do not. Asked a PwC manager for the expense policy twice and got laughed at. - No training provided. Spent two days in office before being shipped to client site. After 2 years yet to hear from the office. You become a number and nothing more. - Performance reviews every 6 months is a joke. The form required to be filled out every 6 months constantly changes. Performance review is based off a senior associate’s 3 minute pitch to management about what you have done. This could be despite you having never worked with them or met them. Asinine. - - My first performance review was after 8 months due to joining cycle. At this review they believed I had been in the company one month. And received no remuneration increase. When I explained it was 8 months the balked and looked sheepishly into their papers. I was promoted on the next cycle despite doing nothing additional or different. Feel this was out of embarrassment. - New ‘Gems’ system was introduced recently to award your colleagues. No one uses it and those who do have reciprocal agreements to earn themselves an extra fiver every month. - Pay is arbitrarily set. There is no structure to who is paid what in this company. If you are liked / known and try to leave they will try and offer you money to stay, never addressing your grievances or reasons for wanting to leave. - The quitting process was laughable. Resigned online (through portal), emailed two managers and thought I was done. Contacted by two different managers (remember they all sit together in the same office) asking what it is I do, where I am located and what project I am on. This is after TWO years of being on said project and going through three supposed performance reviews. I then had to fill out a spreadsheet listing what task I perform on a daily basis so they can try and arrange a replacement.

Please note that this point of view is based on working in Advisory/Consulting in the UK bean counter competency (if you don't know what that means it doesn't apply to you). 1. On joining the firm make sure you are happy with your grade and compensation package, as there is a good chance you will not get a pay rise or bonus for the next five years. 2. Expanding on the above - you are judged every year on utilisation, developing others, extra time you spend on developing collateral and what you've done to raise the firms profile e.g. Charity work in the community, article in the paper, etc. NO ONE will tell you this explicitly when you join the business. Working on a project and hitting your billable hours a year is only a small part of it. You are judged against the ENTIRE competency on a 1 - 4 scale, with only 1s and 2s getting a pay rise every year and even these numbers are bell curved. Meeting your util target will get you a 3 at most, if you haven't worked the extra ours to cover the other areas your performance is reviewed against. 3. People managers hold your career in the palm of your hands, they are the ones that attend moderation on your behalf and argue your case. If you don't have one that cares, then your career is over. Also unless your PM is a high flier you are going no where. Last year I asked my PM what I had to do to get at least a 2. I worked my socks off and did everything he told me - we had regular monthly catch ups to make sure I was on target. Then it came to year end and I didn't get a 2, whereas the other 2 people he managed got 1s. I was livid, how could he not even benchmark my year against the others? I brought this up in my appraisal and all I got was a pat on the head and better luck next time. 4. Despite what they tell you Partner and Director sponsorship is everything. If you aren't "in" with a clique you are going no where, usually your PM will get you into theirs but it doesn't always work that way. In this firm alone there is the ex-Dolittle gang, IP boys club, FS master group and R&C mafia. If you can't get into one of these areas and get Partner and Director support enjoy the no pay rise and bonus years. 5. In my area the firm scores 0 for diversity, all the Partners are WASPs aged between 40 - 60. This is a fact and whilst they are trying to change this nothing has happened since my time here. 6. Good eggs with great experience and technical knowledge are leaving in droves or moving to other areas within the firm. The lack of progression from C to SC and from SC to Director has caused this. There have been too many broken promises and false starts, is it any wonder that of all of the Big 4 this firm have had open recruitment during all of the lean years? 7. Due to how the business has grown, some people have joined the firm without going through the promotion process at a higher level than they were previously at. I am constantly amazed at how little content these people have and just talk their way through meetings, not realising that they are out of their depth.