Deloitte Reviews in Toronto, ON Area

Pros

Variey of work - different projects, ability to transfer internally and abroad
Working at differnet clients in different industires
Training

Cons

Work life balance - you give it your all and they still want more!
Travel expectations are unrealistic for people with families or who want to do something in the evengings.
Working until 11pm at night and then starting again at 8am in the morning - how do they expect you to deliver quality work when you have no sleep? And then they are disppointed because you don't go into the office on the weekend!
Then they wonder why female managers and senior managers leave in droves!

Advice to Senior Management

Be more realistic - people have to have a work life balance and not everyone wants to be a partner with a familty that hates them because they are never around!

Pros

It is useful to get the Deloitte name on your resume as the market image is good.

Cons

Highly political environment - its not what you know but who you know. You are either a part of the club or you're not. Everything depends on that. Your entire experience will depend on whether you get accep[ted into the inner circle. Now, why this happens is illogical and unpredictable. You can try your best and be great at what you do but you may still not get accepted. This results in an invisible wall going up that cannot be broken. Alternatvely if you do get accepted as a part ofthe inner circle - then you can go for dinners and shopping sprees with the partners and get the best projects. An avoidable experience.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve the level of fairness in managing people and stop having favourites.

Pros

Flexibility and interesting opportunities re: work. Working with very intelligent people.

Cons

Conflicting messages from senior management, alot of politics, many parts do not work as a cohesive unit, lack of clear communication and support from certain partner groups. Too much administration is downloaded on senior managers - absolutely a waste of our professional time - many tasks could be performed by administrative staff, yet we refuse to maximize their use in these areas. Some days I feel like I am wasting my CA designation.

Advice to Senior Management

Hold partners accountable for executing on our 4 quadrants - especially as it relates to talent.

Pros

Career oportunities, lots to learn.

Cons

Work life balance, although difficult to avoid/minimize trvelling

Advice to Senior Management

Positive

Pros

One of the largest of the Big 4 companies. Great learning opportunities, excellent training programs, and excellent people to work with. There are a lot of secondment opportunities (chance to work in a different field), JIT (working abroad for 3 months), and GDPs opportunities (working abroad long-term approximately 18-24 months). They have excellent maternity and paternity benefits and you start off with 3 weeks vacation (unlike some companies which only give you 2 weeks). Yearly training takes place usually at Niagara falls were you get to live and eat well and basically enjoy yourself for a week.

Cons

Working unlimited hours, lack of work-life-balance, raises based on how much you talk to senior mgmt and partners and not necessarily how well you performed. Salary compared to mid-size and smaller firms is below par. You start off okay around $46K, get promoted to SAII and get around $51-55K, senior 1 $61-67K, senior II 70-75K, etc.

Advice to Senior Management

No advice.

Pros

Deloitte is a great place to jump-start your career. Very few places will give you the ability to just jump in to deal with senior management right away and work with clients. Compensation grows exponentially, and even if you were to leave at the mid levels - you could jump to industry with a hefty pay raise, in a decent position.

Generally your peer level people are great and you will be able to learn a lot from each one of them.

Cons

That being said, there is also a lot that is expected of you - be willing to put up with a lot of bureaucracy at times and a lot of long hours. It also really depends on the luck of the draw (in a sense) - depends on who you get as your manager, and how competent they are.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior Management needs to spend more time grouping their people together, and understand each other's roles so that there can be better communication between each service line. You should also leverage the fact that Deloitte is a one-stop professional firm, and bring in more of the tax and accounting guys to add extra value during advisory projects.

Pros

great international brand, fun coworkers and excellent technology are huge advantages ins tarting your career in financial accounting

Cons

very political, promotions and work defendant on who you know and who your mentor is. Unfortunately my mentor was let go during my tenure at Deloitte resulting in little to no work and limited exposure. Using contacts outside of my client group I was able to get work however training was limited and a lot of the exposure was on the job

Advice to Senior Management

streamline work offerings so that there is work to do during the summer periods

Pros

Challenge, variety, experience. The big professional services firms provide a great environment for anyone to get a wide variety of challenging client-facing experiences. It looks great on the resume because alumni are widely recognized as experts in the job marketplact. Also, the mandatory sales work gives a good base for selling yourself to other employers. No one works at a large professional services firm for the money, it's all about the experience and challenge and long-term opportunities.

Cons

Long hours, grueling pace. Everyone is paid on salary, except for the partners, who get paid for the money made in a given year. There is no reason for them to control anyone's hours of work. The official party line is work-life balance, but it will never get you anywhere. Senior managers and partners easily work 60-70 hours a week, all year round.

Advice to Senior Management

Deloitte needs to solve the glass ceiling problem. I really felt that senior management didn't totally get why women leave in droves at the Senior Manager level.

Pros

Opportunities to advance, lots of young people in junior ranks which can be a fun, energized environment

Cons

Can be a big company with the feeling of being a cog in the wheel and that nobody cares about you, other than working you hard

Advice to Senior Management

lighten up and have fun, it's just work and we all have lives to go to at the end of the day, also if turnover is a problem you might want to look into the factors that are making people leave after a couple of years. Nobody should burn out in their mid twenties, but I understand the model. The lower level people make the ship float because of their willingness to work hard for not great/but not poor money

Pros

The best thing about working at Deloitte is the opportunity is work with multiple clients. Instead of being stuck in a single job doing a single task, you have the chance to change your role with each project. At Deloitte your skillset and experience will grow much faster then if you worked in industry. With work being project based, chances are you will be less bored because of the changing environment. Another great thing about Deloitte is that you get to see and experience the different ways that companies work. Once you leave Deloitte, you can take those experiences with you to whatever company you work with and quickly adapt to the situation.

Cons

The major downsides at Deloitte are the poor pay and the workaholic culture. When you join Deloitte, don't except to be the best paid person amongst your group of friends. It's not that the pay is bad, it's just average. Deloitte likes to keep things cheap and have the carrot dangling in front of you so that you are always close to grasping it but not quite there. Things such as raises can seem rather arbitrary. Some people will get huge raises for no real apparent reason while others will get little just because of some external reason. People at Deloitte (and probably most consulting firms) will work you do death if you give them the opportunity. So you definitely need to have a strong backbone and the willingness to sometimes say no. Otherwise the work will never end.

Advice to Senior Management

The biggest advice I would give to Senior Management is to not be so cheap. The firm has a tendency to try and keep all the costs so low because it is a partnership. The firm spending money equals actual individual owners spending money. The firm doesn't need to lavish their employees but they do need to do a better job at making people feel valued.