PwC Reviews in Washington, DC Area

I have been working at PwC full-time for more than a year

Pros – Great Work
Lots of thought leadership
Above average quality of people
Average benefits and compensation

Cons – Inconsistent
Archaic business processes
Uncompetitive rates
Operates like a franchise
But each franchise not free enough to develop on own to meet local client needs
Long hours typical of consultancy
Up and Out culture
Individualistic, no team focus.

Advice to Senior Management – Team focused consultancy
Streamline internal processes
Lower bill rates to compete with smaller businesses

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at PwC full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Relationships that you build
Diversity of work that you can do

Cons – Overtime requirement
Hard to get recognized because the company is so large.
Have to move heaven and earth to get a 1 rating.
Do not go into the Washington Federal Practice. There is little movement with various projects.
Very difficult to find engagements to go to if you do not know the right people.
Live close to the office that you are tied to. If you live far you will not be successful at this firm. They expect you to be able to come to the office for every little event or training. Living 75 miles away from your home office is a death sentence and no one will care but you.
No work/life balance
Very arrogant staff (many have the we are better than you attitude)
Make sure you come in a the right level. I came in at the highest Associate level possible and did not get a raise for 2 years until I was promoted.

Advice to Senior Management – Understand the demographics of your staff.
Stop hiring people just to hire them. Make sure you have engagements to place people. Do not hire someone on wishful thinking

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at PwC full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Variety of client projects and decent travel

Cons – No room for growth and expanding one's skillsets

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at PwC full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Teaches you good professional habits for recent college graduates
Looks good on your resume
Dumb people in your social circle will think you work for an investment bank

Cons – Within their consulting division, they portray their projects as super important, smart, and strategic. The reality is that those projects are in the minority. The firm's bread and butter is in audit and tax. The majority of the projects are large, terribly boring 'asset management' type activities no one wants to do. You might get on a few good projects here and there, but for the most part, you won't like a majority of the projects. PwC would rather take a boring 'dumb' project over a 'smart strategic' one 9 times out of 10. Less risk and looks better in the partner's profolio.

PwC is great if you're a straight up accountant who loves long hours but doesn't necessary need to think too hard. If you're more specialized, you don't have much of a future. The work skews to the accounts, so they have more resources (entry level college grads), they win more work, and they advance up the pyramid scheme faster than consultants.

Also, PwC is highly siloed. Transfering to another line of work within the firm will literally take years. They will say 'oh you can do whatever you want.' You can't. If you're profitable, partners won't let you leave without long notice. Any sane person would just go to another company and take you 15% raise.

Advice to Senior Management – Management knows what they are. They are a name brand. They build businesses around that brand. They really don't care about their output. I wish they didn't spend all that time trying to brand themselves a 'smart, sexy, young, ba ba ba' firm and were more unfront about what their business is about.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at PwC full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – National/market-wide trainings are second to none. You don't get thrown to the wolves. You are thoroughly oriented to the firm, the line of service and the clients. Upper management, partners in particular, were very accessible.

Cons – Senior level staff aren't always properly prepared/trained for their positions. Many lack the communication skills to clearly instruct and constructively critique their team members. Their inability to express their needs and expectations causes communication breakdown, then frustration, then toxic work environment, resulting in crap work. Everything their saying usually sounded much better in their heads right before they started speaking, but you're still expected to complete work "kinda like this, but maybe not that way....or something" and it be exactly how they pictured it.

The onus has always been placed on the lower level staff to learn the work styles of their supervisors, which is fine. But taking away that same responsibility from upper level staff gives way to lazy leadership.

Advice to Senior Management – Get it in ingrained in associates from Day 1 that knowing your "audience" doesn't end on promotion day. Try to refresh current senior staff on the value of being able to TEACH others, not just dole out tasks.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at PwC full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – - Great clients
- Significant opportunities for advancement
- Good traning & resources
- Flexibilities & benefits

Cons – - Long hours, late nights & weekends
- High expectations
- Multiple projects & never ending busy season

I have been working at PwC full-time for less than a year

Pros – -Diverse group of people to work with
-Variety of job opportunities and locations
-Everyone seems genuinely willing to help
-Training

Cons – -Hard to find where you fit in if you are new
-Salary is below or at average, have to fight for more
-Health benefits are not the best (based out of NY, I was told by insurance rep that I should have realized before going to urgent care that it was out of network and should have called first..... I live in DC! The closest is 25+miles away in another state) Premiums are high
-Work life balance

Advice to Senior Management – The support staff (help hotline, tech staff) are not very helpful at all, often very rude. They do not understand or realized that the information we are asking we do not have access to do at the time of the call. It is very frustrating to deal with the support people when they make you feel like they are doing you a favor by taking the call. Rethink the outsourcing of this function, responses are way too scripted.
Referrals are a joke the process can take anywhere from 4+ months and only usually works if it is a manager or higher that has the referral. Hard to referral qualified people that are looking for a job now and we offer them a position that they interviewed for six months ago.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at PwC full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – - Decent pay after a few years
- If on a travel project, you'll work all the time, but make lifelong connections
- Opportunity to work with VERY BRIGHT and VERY TALENTED people if you're on the right project.

Cons – - Politics
- LOTS of effort required on your part to get visibility, get staffed on a project, get experience when on that project.
- Few people to learn from
- Some people get promoted before they're ready due to tenure with the firm which results in poor management.
- If you're good, management will take advantage of that and give you as much work as possible. (80+ weeks.) It is not uncommon to work every weekend and on vacations. You have to try very hard to find a team that recognizes work/life balance and a need to recharge.

Advice to Senior Management – - Promote based on ability
- Improve HR to be more consistent across the practice.
- Help new hires to be onboarded and utilized ASAP.
- Provide more technical training at the start so people advance with a technical skillset instead of just general management skills. Encourage technically competent people to stay by providing competitive pay and don't worry about if they're bringing in work, because their work is winning us more work indirectly.

I have been working at PwC

Pros – Brand in the marketplace, Relationships developed with clients,

Cons – Compliance requirements due to audit services

Advice to Senior Management – Streamline Performance Management processes

I worked at PwC

Pros – - Brand name
- Global recognition
- Financial stability

Cons – - Work life balance
- Not willing to experiment by attempting different approaches
- Salary range is low. This was one of the primary reasons for my exit from PwC.
- Very poor immigration policy (green card and H1 policy)
- Every year the organization spends millions of dollars in the name of advisory university to train their employees. But the course work at this week long camp is outdated. The courses offered need to be improved based on the latest market trends.
- The performance appraisal process remains confusing to date. For a year, I had 4 performance reviews - 3 of them had exceeds expectations while one had met expectations. My salary raise and bonus however did not happen as expected. My partner indicated that I was on the "cusp" with many others and hampered my chances to get a good raise/bonus.

Advice to Senior Management – - Increase risk appetite
- Study the market trends and tailor the training courses accordingly
- Improve the immigration policy