Nice place to start with, but a lot of politics and brain-washing to justify working for free is a great lifestyle
Pros
- engage with different types of clients. Understand the clients a lot more if you have continuity; - time is provided to study ACA; - flexible working if you are senior; - some nice people around you; - one of the best places to be trained as accountant; - genuine nice partners (normally those who has been a partner for a while)
Cons
- extremely low pay per hour, if you add all the overtime spent into it. Also I believe EY offers the lowest pay among big four; - if your manager is disorganised, don't care and not supportive, you will end up in a lot of trouble and spend all your weekend on things; - Also too many hierarchy: sometimes manager and senior manager speak different things and you end up waiting days to do things later on being told not necessary; - promotion, rating is all about who you know. You can work your axx off but still not getting any reward apart from a thank you card; - you will never be only working on one client; there will always be left overs and you are expected to carry on working. This is bad for resourcing (understaffed); - bonus is a joke; - you need to be 'promoted' to assistant manager before going for manager; none of the big four does this; - some regional offices have very bad office politics going around; - brain-washing culture: setting up impossible goal and even if achieved there is zero reward to staff. Sugar-coat everything and made people believe that money doesn't matter and it is OK to lose market share etc.