I actually really like it here. It's engaging, different, if you don't like someone, usually you only have to work with them for a month of the time, some of my best friends work here. Benefits are good, assistance is good. But my main complaints in order of importance to me are as follows:
1) For the most part, 95% of the people here are competent and are high achievers who take responsibility for when they screw up and are quick to encourage and help you. The other 5% are why people are overworked and end up leaving, and they usually pair their highest performers with these 5% because the audit still needs to get done. Even a year where the high performer has to do 85% of several Fortune 100 audit by themselves and successfully handle 13 other engagements is enough to drive someone mad; I think you literally have steal money before they will let anyone go. And I think they are ok keeping someone who is in that 5% group and losing the good worker, because they know the good worker will probably go to their clients helping them out anyways in the long run.
2) This is a very politically correct firm which is why certain people are not let go and why they are a lot of talk when it comes to addressing problems but are either unwilling or very slow to do anything that would actually change the way stuff is done, and in order to be a "high performer aka 5 rating", you must dedicate 50% of your life outside of work to activities hosted by the firm, picnics, fundraisers, holiday parties, group outings, women's events, recruiting (basically live and breathe the black and yellow) and you must plan and organize them as well and they must be fun and exciting and over the top and creative. Also it is strongly encouraged go golfing with the uppers to move your career along. AND if you are a poor performer (5% mentioned above) but you do all the things I just mentioned, you are probably still going to be labeled as a high performer and they will not fire you.
3) A new APB plan that goes into effect this year gives you the "about the same" raise (all the examples showed a 6-10% raise rather than a 8-13% raise you would have got) with an up to 9 - 18% bonus based on your year-end rating: 3, 4 or 5 and your rank: senior, manager etc. For the first year this is in effect, you obviously make more with this plan. The second year, you make a little less, third year, a little less, because you make less with a smaller compounded base salary. I thought it was funny that they told this to a room full of accountants and said we would actually make more with this plan. It just takes away from your base and puts into a bonus and then your base salary isn't compounded as much as it would have been in the first place. Anyways, I'm anxious to see what actually happens in the next few years I'm here.
