PricewaterhouseCoopers Reviews in Denver, CO Area

Pros

Unlimited career advancement opportunities, if wanted

Cons

Cross Country Travel tends to be a bit much

Advice to Senior Management

Compensate for high performance

Pros

opportunity to be exposed to sophisticated, cutting-edge issues collegues are top notch training experience resume builder, opportunity for growth within the firm

Cons

salary, overtime, lack of acknowledgement from some partners and directors, certain directors and partners do not stand behind their people

Advice to Senior Management

keep up the good work, grow the pwc brand, evaluate performance based on how the employee treats professionally others in the office, discourage and take a stand against individuals who treat subordinates horribly

Pros

Top notch resources, excellent peers, challenging work with fantastic opportunities to work on household name companies, ability to go overseas and work.

Cons

Work/life balance sometimes skewed more toward work, freeze on salaries for past 2 years (raises did come back this year for all staff) and politics can become a bit of a pain.

Advice to Senior Management

Loosen up the purse strings a bit. Staff feels overworked and underappreciated... they are constantly busy but have only seen meager raises and bonuses. Pay for performance!

Pros

PwC has virtually every opportunitiy possible within the finance and accounting industry, from audit and tax to valuation and due diligence. Opportunities abound to work with the largest, most complex and most respected companies in the world, and to interract with their top execs.

Cons

Work life balance is hard to come by> Time sensitive projects and deadlines come up on a moment's notice and can require extreme overtime.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to recognize the reality that industry values the industry/public mix, and as a result people are leaving earlier in their careers, for significant salary boosts. When the firm says salaries are markety competitive, they need to compare themselves ahainst industry, and not just the rest of the big 4.

Pros

- Great place to work and gain experience
- Good advancement possibilities
- Strong team atmosphere
- Great knowledge sharing

Cons

- Recent salary and bonus structure
- Travel required for Advisory Services
- Work life balance isn't always in balance

Advice to Senior Management

- Pay your high performers to keep them
- Prepare new individuals in management to better sell services
- Consider higher bonuses

Pros

Good place to launch a career
As close to a meritocracy as you will find in cororate america
Good research tools & continuing educational resources

Cons

Weak middle management
Sub-par pay below the manager level
Have to be a jack of all trades in smaller markets

Advice to Senior Management

Give employees opportunities to rotate between lines of service to better round out their skill sets. The firm should require a higher understanding of corporate financial and valuation principals by its auditors.

Pros

The chance to one day get a great job somewhere else. I fully believe that if I can put up with all of the stuff they put me through, I will be able to get a job as a controller or CFO within 8 years

Cons

they work you like crazy, don't care about your personal life, never let you take vacation, are very demanding and require you to participate in way to many things, talk behind each others backs, unrealistic expectaions, high stress, poor benefits, horrible salary for qualifications, working as an auditor sucks cuz people dont like you!

Advice to Senior Management

take care of your people better. When you give them sick days, don't make them feel bad for taking a sick day and even worse, don't talk behind their back!

Pros

Learning opportunities are unmatched anywhere. You will go to a lot of trainings (some may say too many, but I think the more you learn the more marketable you'll be elsewhere). You could come in as a new intern or associate and know nothing in the beginning and leave with knowledge that puts you head-and-shoulders above any other candidate for your next job.

This may sound snotty, but I do not like working with a group of people where you are always the smartest person in the room. This is not the case with PwC. Your peers are the best of their respective specialties and you are too. It is very nice getting to work with such smart people.

You'll rack up a lot of airline miles depending on which department you join (Audit gets a lot, Tax gets a lot too, but not as much)

Also may sound snotty, but the name goes very far!

Cons

Early in your career, you will quickly realize that "PwC" on your resume will get you better compensated if you jump ship before getting promoted to Director. If you stick it out though, you are much more likely to be better compensated over the life of your career (stick it out is my advice).
Another downside is that everyone you work with is so busy with their own work, some important things get put off until the last minute (e.g. your periodic formal reviews "PFF's as we call them", annual reviews). A couple other downsides include tracking your time on a 1/10th of an hour basis. Lots of people cannot get used to this aspect, but it is necessary to bill the clients the appropriate amounts. The "chargeable hours" goals can be difficult to meet as they are set very high and your success is measured weightily on this specific metric.
These downsides are managable, tolerable (at least for me), and can be overcome by the right candidates.

Advice to Senior Management

My advice to Senior Management would be
1. to step-up it's benefits education (perhaps offer a class at our national training sessions). Our benefits are great, but so many people do not understand them so they rely on their co-workers to explain how they work. (the "Roger and Marge" emails are making progress in this department, but only if people take the time to read them - face-to-face training would be much better)
2. Force the partners to get with it when it comes to technology (DMS, GFS, A&C) and make them stop relying on their underlings to teach them how to use tools they should have learned at some partner training - this irks me because it takes away time from being productive and replaces it with babysitting partners.
3. You have indicated that you are not looking to layoff during these hard times. I hope you are doing everything possible to make that happen (we believe you are)!

Pros

A great place to build networking relationships and gain exposure to a variety of experiences. The work always seems to be challenging, and most internal programs are sufficient to build your career. The opportunities for learning and education are also a plus to working for one of the large accounting firms

Cons

Compensation is lacking. Firms policy is to pay cost of labor for the market you live in and not the cost of living, so if you live in an area where it is expensive to live but the labor force is educated and strong then the cost of that labor will be low for the firm and they will pay accordingly. Also, from communications with National HR and locas HR the firms policy with regards to benefits and all compensation is to be in the middle when compared to their competitors. They do not seem willing to pay to reduce turnover. I guess they seem content to keep burning them out and turning them over.

Advice to Senior Management

Seek feedback with realtion to benefits decisions and other decisions which will impact staff. The staff may not see your decisions the same way you do.

Pros

Nice training at Price Waterhouse Coopers. People are driven to stay current and better their knowledge, and Price Waterhouse Coopers. as a whole is supportive by providing encouragement and tuition support when appropriate. Attrition is down to about 17 percent, which is good by historical comparisons. There are many locations of Price Waterhouse Coopers., so you can keep your career on track even when your spouse's job or your whim lead you to another city.

Cons

Anytime you work for one of largest companies in the nation, there is bound to be some bureaucracy. PWC is not different from the norm in this respect.

Advice to Senior Management

Leverage your wonderful brand and work on developing your people.