Ernst & Young Reviews

Pros

Salaries are very good, very generous vacation package. Still offers a pension program to all full time employees. Theoretically offers flexible work arrangements, although it is difficult to have non-working time respected.

Cons

re-orgs every 1-2 years. Far too many lay-offs, leaving already over burdened workers with no hope for a respite. Time off is not respected, you are still expected to attend conference calls and respond to e-mails even during vacation. You must attend conference calls in the middle of the night to accommodate India, where all IT Services jobs are being sent, even though the agreement was off-shore resources would work US hours. Management does not respect employees, "work life balance" is not taken seriously, communications have improved but still have a long way to go.

Advice to Senior Management

Remember the people who work in the back office are the ones that enable the client facing employees to do their jobs - treat IT services workers with a bit more respect. Outsourcing is clearly not working, reconsider the model to the original "co-sourcing" and "staff augmentation" it was intended to be. This used to be a true "people first" company, consider reverting to some of the policies that were in place 3 or more years ago when morale and loyalty were much higher than they are now.

Pros

Higher social status, a lot of learning opportunities, I am working at Financial Services Office ("FSO") where there seems to be a lot of internal transfer opportunities

Cons

There are already a lot of accountants and auditors in Hong Kong. Ernst & Young is not competitive to its competitors like PWC and KPMG.

Advice to Senior Management

Please place more importance on your staff. Please establish more channels to listen to your people. Please hire enough people to meet the workload.

Pros

Good mentoring network once you have found the mentors suitable for you (not necessarily the one assigned to you). Generally, if you have no clue what to do in life, audit is a good (I didn't say it was great) stepping stone.

Cons

Low bonus, sometimes your colleagues are not the brightest of the lot, recognition might be subjective and preference given to people with access to money

Advice to Senior Management

Your people are your assets; treat them well and they will stay. Career growth will take precedence after a certain point so identify stars early.

Pros

A great place to start the career and looks great on the resume

Cons

No support for education and no work life balance

Advice to Senior Management

people need to study so please give them some time off

Pros

Good work life balance, matching 401K (up to 6%), diversity, opportunities for advancement, training, good communication from leadership, medical/dental plan, pension

Cons

No bonuses for employees that are in Core Business Services. Undeserved promotions, favoritism, lack of direction from mid-level management, untimely feedback

Advice to Senior Management

Feedback should be provided to employees in a timely manner (not during mid-year and annual reviews). IT Management needs to be re-evaluated. There is serious lack of leadership in the Northeast IT Support group.

Pros

For the right jobs, there is a lot of room for growth especially serving clients. For those who like playing in the big leagues, it's a great reputation to have.

Cons

The workload is such that what they call "flexible" work is very hard to come by. Its talked about a lot but mostly people don't experience it.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't panic so often.

Pros

There are ample opportunities to grow and continue learning at Ernst and Young. I have never had an issue when needing to take time off.

Cons

The hours are horrendous even for public accounting standards. Management can either be supportive or can make your life harder - just depends on who you work with.

Advice to Senior Management

Management should be more grateful for all the amount of hours and stress that those below them put up with, especially because sometimes the stress is caused by them and is unnecessary.

Pros

good excel skills and net working

Cons

the project called protfolio using sharpes

Advice to Senior Management

good not bad it was nice experience

Pros

Lots of opportunity to grow! A lot of exposure to different clients, industry and accounts.

Cons

long hours, no balance for life/work. No bonus other than promotion bonus, that won't happen every year.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to keep team excited! Maybe profit sharing, or at least think of retaining bonus.

Pros

The Brand Name of the company

Cons

The salary is low compared to competition (rest of big four) and the management is poor.

Advice to Senior Management

Meritocracy and promoting balanced people