Ernst & Young Reviews in Dallas-Fort Worth, TX Area

Pros

Professionalism and very knowledgeable peers

Cons

Not applicable at this time

Advice to Senior Management

Not applicable at this time

Pros

Hires alot of minorities especially foreigners

Cons

Fires the minorities first, greedy with giving out pay increases. Beware of the HR lady, she is never on your side. Favoritism dictates who gets on the big jobs.

Advice to Senior Management

You wonder why minorities leave in large numbers, well you failed miserably on integrating your workforce no matter how u try to you your stats from Atlanta or minority heavy states to claim you are a diverse company

Pros

Knowledge sharing, tools, consulting infrastructure (this is all pre-Cap Gemini). Very professional culture and one can learn a lot very quickly b

Cons

Not truly focused on industry expertise and depth
Promotion of mediocrity
Too many empty suits with little substance and buffed nails at the top.
However, this was a great place to work and learn. Every large company has it's share of issues.

Advice to Senior Management

Be cautious of heading back into management consulting and hiring back many of the mediocre partners who were not able to succeed outside the audit driven referral business of the past 10 Years. Without true industry depth and intense practical operations knowledge, it will be a tough road to travel competing in today's management consulting arena.

Pros

Good networking opportunities and work experience

Cons

Long work hours and work life balance

Advice to Senior Management

more cross-service experience

Pros

The salary is good and some managers are very flexible with time off or working from home.

Cons

Management allows favortism to be shown to certain employees and it is really more of a "who you know" environment rather than "what you know".

Advice to Senior Management

Put policies in place to prohibit favortism and then enforce them.

Pros

Flexible, flexible, flexible! EY is big on work/life balance and that concept made me want to work hard and benefit from the flexibility that ensues. So long as you got your work done, EY was supportive of flex schedules, alternative work schedules, telecommuting, occasionally working in other locations (i.e. I could fly 1,500 miles Thurs night to visit family, spend Friday working out of the EY office near my family and spend the evening and all weekend with them, flying back first thing Monday morning to where I now live and going in a bit late to work from my main office - all without having to take a day off or use any vacation!) After 10 years at EY, it's hard to adapt to the much more traditional corporate culture of my current company.

Cons

Management has a lot of influence on one's career, so managers with high expectations of their staff seem to have a more knowledgeable, productive, and effectively utilized team, but high performers become part of a well-oiled machine rather than becoming the next line level leaders. In the meantime, other managers with more lenient expectations wind up promoting their effective (but far less knowledgeable or well-rounded) staff to manager sooner. These new managers too often wind up acquiring seasoned staff that are then more knowledgeable than themselves... EY seems to lose a lot of highly experienced staff to industry competitors (and, in turn, new EY business is sometimes lost to these knowledgeable folks that have chosen to leave EY).

Advice to Senior Management

Since EY is a partnership and cannot be publicly traded as a company, there's no possibility for Stock Purchase Discounts or Stock Options Earnings, and Independence clauses severely limit the ability to invest in other companies.... When I left in 2008, this translated to a very noticeable gap in compensation between EY and virtually any corporate career. Hopefully that gap has gotten smaller (the Annual Profit Sharing at EY has never been consistent, so hopefully that was not EY's answer for this compensation gap).

Pros

Good place to launch career.

Cons

Salary is too low and work a lot oh hours.

Advice to Senior Management

Raise salary and raise 401k match.

Pros

The job opportunities after leaving Ernst & Young are excellent. The interactions with senior management of the client is great preparation for future positions. The raises are also given on a yearly basis.

Cons

It is mandatory to work 55 hours a week during busy season but often busy season lasts up to 6 months. It is also common to work more than 50 hours a week outside of busy season.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management sometimes feels that long hours year round are a mandatory necessity to complete a job. I think that often jobs are understaffed and overworked in order to bill the adequate amount of hours.

Pros

Great job promotions and job opportunities. Exposure to many different industries and problems. Overall, this company provides a wonderful learning experience in a short amount of time.

Cons

Depending on the clients you have, you can work up to 80 - 100 hours per week during busy season. Again, depending on the clients you have, non-busy season hours can also average around 60 hours per week. There is absolutely no work life balance.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more staff on audit teams to offer a better work life balance during non-busy season months. There are many many problems with too much work being delegated down to the lower levels and those workers becoming overworked trying to meet deadlines.

Pros

- Practice is still growing so you can gain recognition and be a part of the growth
- Parent company is funding BAS. This makes it easier for the practice to stustain
- Easy goals and targets
- Laid back "audit" culture
- Low utilization expectations
- Saalaries are competitive.

Cons

- BAS needs to understand the difference between technology and Risk/Audit/FSCP etc. You cannot mix the resource pool and use the same yardstick for measurement.
- EY has a good culture for Audit and legacy Risk etc. This is good but you cannot run consulting projects with this attitude, and be competitive with the Accentures and Deloittes of the world.
- Utilization goals need to be carefully looked at, and staff through managers should be rewarded for good utilization.
- Practice is still "finding itself". It will take at least 2 years for it to settle down understand its place in the competitive landscape. Right now..no one has a clue. The company is accepting all kinds of projects, as long as people can be staffed. They are struggling to find its differentiator...even though they are trying to leverage other areas of a typical big 4.
- Buddy circle is annoying...especially those established between legacy groups like CAS.
- Lack of experience at Management level. Anyone can become manager in this firm..if you know the right people.

Advice to Senior Management

Please bring on experienced Managers and Sr Managers into the practice and get rid of underperforming staff - Sr Managers. You are in a competitive business!!