EY reviews

The workloads are insane & I am not a lazy person. This applies to junior admin, Exec Assts, and managers. Seeing people at their desks from 8 am - 10 pm is not uncommon. Spent just over 3 years there and took an actual lunchbreak maybe 30% of the time. I rarely left before 7 pm so 11 hr days were common. They have a model of piling up to 5 demanding Partners on one Exec Asst and it is horrendous. I was involved in hiring & had to leave the firm due to my conscience bothering me; seeing bright & ultra-capable people accept the job and then be burned out and mentally exhausted 3 months in was hard to take. The Director of my former department knows darn well they need to overall the working model but ... doubt it will happen. There are far better places to go if you are bright & capable. It will sound like a great place in the interview process but ... just don’t. It baffles me they can boast of work / life balance when a huge percentage of staff are pulling insane overtime year round. There is no “slow season” despite what they say. Was grateful to have a job & income but in over 20 yrs, easily the most draining & toxic environment I have worked in. 99% of my peers left either before me or soon after; we were all part of the same hiring wave ... about 20 of us.

1. Horrible hours, no such thing as off peak, Feb to Mar you are rushing ECI/tax provisions, Apr to Jun you are rushing REITs and Trusts tax returns, July to Dec you are rushing corporate tax returns. Other time of the year you are doing queries, advices. Basically what other companies split into different departments, you have it all :) 2. Horrible salary and progression: you may think the progression is good, that's just good marketing from the companies. If you were to calculate your hourly pay, the only time you can catch up with people in MNCs is when you are a partner. Last time partnership takes 15 years? Now it easily takes more than 20 years. Why? The market is just so big, when it is so saturated, no new partner positions will open up. 3. Bonus and promotion lag: Out of the big 4, only EY waits till end of Oct to promote you and give you bonus :) In the past, EY has TOIL but now it has been scrapped. So you are getting the shortest end of the stick. 4. Support for SQP: 4 days per paper vs 10 days for some other big 4s. Really supportive :) 5. Value of work: Almost none. Just rolling last year figures. If you really want to learn, you have to put in extra hours because there is just so much to do, you just wanna complete the tasks fast. When you are caught deciding to complete the task and go home at 1am vs understand the concepts and go home at 3am, the choice becomes rather obvious after a while.