EY reviews

Worked in the Luton office for 5 years. -long hrs -no social life -poor career progression: its all politics. who you know rather than what you know -poor training: seriously why the hell are ex-big4 seen as so good. it wasnt until I joined a top 20 accountancy practice did i realise how little big4 graduates actually know about accounting. skill set you develop at EY is actually pretty narrow although perfectly suited for them. but when you get to a different firm you realise how well rounded other accountancy grads are and how poorly trained and narrow you are. Told by several recruitment agencies that a lot of practices particularly smaller practices prefer not to take on ex-big4 staff. - bad pay!!! I make 30% more doing the same job with better hrs at a top 20 firm than at EY -bland uninteresting work colleagues. they all come from the same types of background. work parties were an endless boring pain -EVERYONE seems fake - really bad career management. trying to move up the company is not easy. very competitive with few opening and lots of grads going after them. creates a culture of staff ALWAYS under charging their time, under mining and back chatting about other colleagues, taking on unreasonable about of extra work to try and stand out and allowing managers to take advantage of them to show how much they "enjoy" the "challenge" of the extra work load - ENDLESS amount of admin, forms to fill in, surveys needing to be filled out by other departments, feed back request, POINTLESS training on the other side of London at peak work times that you HAVE to attend. Honestly i spent over 3hrs a days on admin on top of my ever increasing work load.

Very passive-aggressive environment. Terrible communication from senior managers and partners. Reviews are based on the opinion of one or two senior managers & partners rather than your documented reviews. Ratings are pushed down to save money on raises. Terrible work hours, no work-life balance. Your success is very dependent on you knowing the right people. They reward people who complain constantly rather than hard work. Employees are treated as if they are disposable. Many superiors would rather do the work themselves than teach, and then turn around and give poor reviews. You are rated against peers across the US, when opportunities are not the same. Different areas have different clients, different offices rate differently, etc. Competition across employees is encouraged, and the teamwork aspect of audit teams is not emphasized or encouraged.