EY Employee Reviews about "office politics"

Cons

- Partners & Sr. Managers very poor at people management - Bias and preferential treatment shown by Partners & Sr. Managers - Management tends to blame junior employees for blunders and mistakes in decisions taken by them - Local work culture office very 'school' like and political. Inflexible and needless micro-managing by people not involved in actual project work - Many managers not clear conceptually in areas of work. Tend to make client sales without knowing concepts themselves. - Contributions never valued. Credit for work done by junior employee gets taken away by Sr. Management - Local culture definitely not 'globally integrated' as per EY values

Cons

No work life balance Partners have clear favorites and if you aren't one of them you will get the worst clients, and projects Strong office politics means it doesn't matter how good you are if you aren't connected to the right people They give the 'appearance' of supporting D&I but it is just a facade

Cons

No major cons if you stay out of office politics and act as a team player. Focus on developing your skill set

Cons

the pressure to work overtime and weekends with little emphasis on flexibility and balance. there are a lot of office politics and the ratings process could be greatly improved. working harder is not typically rewarded, and there is a high degree of turnover from people leaving for better paying jobs

Cons

Work days are long. They say 9-5 but really its 9-8 so forget about having a social or family life. If you have kids seriously dont apply or if you do make sure you say you wont do overtime and make sure its in your contract. You could get the job done within the working hours but everything has to be reviewed by a manager. Every single email. Managers usually complete their work first and start reviewing yours at 5:30 so you have to stay late waiting for them. Because of this everyone is burnt out. EYs systems are archaic with a cray amount of admin as a lot of work is farmed out to India. You have to waste a lot of time emailing India rather than getting on with your work because there is no case management system. There is also no precedent bank so there is a lot of inconsistency and a lot of inefficiency. There is also no training whatsoever. You get the legal and regulatory mandatory training for 2 days when you first join but then there is no training on their internal systems. At EY you learn by mistakes. Managers are too busy trying to meet their own billing targets to train. They want people who can hit the ground running, so if you are coming here for personal development you wont get it. Promotions require at least 1 year of service so its better to interview at the level you want rather than progressing internally. There is a lot of office politics and sometimes it feels like you are back in school. People dont work to help each other here. If they can they will throw you under the bus for any little thing so really watch your back and keep copies of emails. Its a toxic culture. Entry level staff are nice but as you go up the ladder they are all on some ego trip and seem to have lost their soul. I realised this on the first day! If you really need the prestige of working for EY then I would say you need to be young, without commitments and have no social life. Even then I dont think you would want to be there for longer than 6 months as the people and internal politics does wear you down mentally. Hopefully I can help someone. If I had read a review like this I would not have interviewed for the role and would have rather worked for a high street firm because the pay is not worth it.

Cons

Long hours are expected. You are also expected to put in long hours on client-facing projects. Be prepared to adapt to neverending changing environments and handle the office politics of your clients.

Cons

- Hierarcial culture - Drinking culture despite pushing itself for the 'diverse and inclusive' tagline - Promotions not solely being on merit but based on office politics and 'who you know' - Difficult to organise secondments abroad or to other service lines despite this being sold to new joiners as a perk of a global firm - When I joined as a graduate associate, seniors above me were not very supportive or willing to coach others and there was a blame culture on some teams against the most junior staff. - Pay is in line with all other big 4 but still 10-15k below industry jobs for qualified accountants

Cons

office politics zero work life balance higher management only focuses on end results blame game and toxicity prevalent

Cons

So far, I don't see many cons. This experience is what you make of it, you have to be proactive and hopefully be surrounded by supportive people. It is still a large firm and I'm sure office politics and redundant bureaucracies might hamper you somehow.

Cons

1. The environment is toxic and hostile full of backstabbing and office politics. I had one Senior who constantly lies about what he says. So many times he orally assigns something totally contradictory to what he assigns in his email, but he denies it all the time. Other staff just mindlessly follows the Senior and listens to him like those little gangs in high school. In other words, to survive you'd better be a toady and make your Senior happy in every possible way. 2. The engagement teams in this firm is highly separated by ethnic groups (another reflection of office politics). All the teams I've been assigned on only consist of people from the same ethnic group - all black people team, all white people team, all Asian people team. So many times in a team, as an entry level Staff I'm the only one who's from a different ethnic group. I've never seen a white coworker speak with a black coworker during my entire time at the firm. 3. The performance review is a place for Seniors to make up vicious stories via their imagination. Expect your performance to be full of this type of stories that are so absurd and strange, slandering your performance, accusing you of things you didn't do, making you wonder if the Senior is on drugs (even if they are not they are depressed enough from work to mess with your performance review for fun). Everyone is overly sensitive to other people's micro expressions or use of words, likes to read between the lines and misreads your oral and body language and takes them in a bad way. Everyone blames entry level staff for any mistakes in the team. 4. Hours are extremely long. Had to work with a Senior until late night on a national holiday eve just because I didn't take the day off and the Senior himself doesn't usually celebrate that particular holiday. Mostly no weekends, sometimes overnight projects where you can't leave client site until near dawn. Is this what you want for your career? Working extremely long hours making minimum wage? 5. All the cultural thing that they put in their marketing is nonexistent in the firm in reality. Just a sweatshop where people work mindlessly like a zombie and bite each other constantly. Leaving this firm was one of the best decisions I made in the past decade.