PricewaterhouseCoopers Reviews in Los Angeles, CA Area

Pros

PricewaterhouseCoopers has many resources available to its personnel, including resources within your own tax group and resources outside of yoru tax group.

Cons

When I was working at PricewaterhouseCoopers, it seems like specialization was highly encouraged. I was hoping to diversify my experience when I first started out as a tax consultant.

Advice to Senior Management

I believe it is important for management to recognize people's hard work and efforts. If management could encourage more timely feedback (upper feedback and lower feedback) or communication amoung people from all levels, I believe expectations could be achieved more easily.

Pros

-Great Career progression
-Greater Exit Options than an industry start
-CPA fully funded

Cons

-Long hours
-Low Pay
-Luck of the draw with whomever your supervisor is

Advice to Senior Management

Realign review system to reflect a meritocratic system.

Pros

- Opportunities to work on challenging engagements
- Great resume builder
- Opportunities to go places can begin as soon as 2 yrs after start date, but are generally more abundant after 3-4 yrs (i.e., domestic transfers, international transfers, transfers to other lines of service)
- It feels like management has taken a more long-term approach on staffing and has not laid off a significant number of individuals due to the economic downturn (this can be classified as either a pro or con depending on your performance - when PwC decided to do this they froze salaries to pay for the additional heads that were retained)
Vacation time increases from 15 days to 22 days/yr after 2 years

Cons

- Promotion to senior after 3 yrs (other Big 4 promote after 2 yrs)
- Compensation - pay increases (after considering unfavorable changes to health care coverage coupled with increasing premiums) don't feel as nice
- Salary bands within each staff class appear to be tight, which suggests that higher performing individuals (in terms of base pay increases) don't appear to be as significant when compared to expected performing individuals - I feel this, to a degree, inhibits higher performance

Advice to Senior Management

- Continue to encourage staff to consider transfers, both domestic and international
- Think about the "big picture" message that is being sent to staff regarding compensation/bonuses when there is already significant need for staff in the market (i.e., reconsider comp for current staff when looking outside of PwC for staff because of turnover due to various reasons, but mainly compensation, when you have already trained/invested staff within PwC who are underpaid)

Pros

Good, smart people that they hire

Cons

Lots of politics involved...very little work/life balance

Advice to Senior Management

More work/life balance

Pros

+Room to grow with the firm

Cons

- No worklife balance, I don't get fairly compensated.

Advice to Senior Management

Please give me more money!

Pros

PwC provides a great learning environment filled with many young smart working professionals. The idea of beginning work with 50 new hires in one's start class is always a nice thing.

Cons

Work life balance is really non-existent although it is advertised incessantly. However, prospective accountants should probably know what they are getting themself into.

Advice to Senior Management

An increase in pay might be a good idea in order to retain your employees. Overall, great job in navigating through the recession.

Pros

Good Exposure to a variety of clients
Collegiate environment with fellow colleagues
Opportunity to work on different teams and different management styles
Great "non-work" initiatives such as volunteering, diversity, and community service

Cons

Hours are really rough - my longest day was 26 hours. Last busy season I worked 70-80 hours consistently for 3 months straight.
Underpaid for the amount of work we are forced to do.
Managers believe you are available to work for them even though you aren't booked on their jobs
Too much of an emphasis on chargeability

Advice to Senior Management

management, especially partners, are blind to the fact that their teams stay late into the night/morning to meet unrealistic deadlines. There is a disconnect between partners/managers and the staff in terms of setting expectations.

Pros

I'm working and have benefits, I know a lot of people who are not.

Cons

Leadership makes promises and then doesn't deliver. Gives excuses, doesn't realize staff can read between the lines of communications.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop telling staff you actually care about us when you really don't. All leadership cares about is the bottom line.

Pros

Smart people.
Growth opportunities.
Potential to learn a lot.

Cons

Training is minimal
Very unfair review process. No appreciation for the hard work employees do. They will rate some employees low so that favorite employees can be given more. Does not matter if the favorite ones are actually hopeless. You just need a godfather to help you.
Failure at management level is somehow always pushed down to the associates, seniors and managers who are not the favored ones.

Advice to Senior Management

Adopt fair practices to rate your employees.

Pros

Good people and they were really trying hard to create a good work life balance for employees. The big company and big name can provide a lot of opportunity.

Cons

The audit work is not the most exciting job to have. Also, working at different client sites very few weeks can make the commute difficult.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep developing talent and allow people to reach their full potential within the organization so they dont leave for other jobs.