1. The performance review process is only part-meritocracy: Everybody at EY is assigned a 'counsellor', an individual in your team who's one or two grades above yourself and who has the responsibility for representing you during performance review discussions (you're not allowed to participate in your own performance review). Each employee is ultimately given a moderated feedback score between 1-5 that determines their eligibility for a pay rise and career progression that year. Some counsellors see it as a badge of honour to try to get the top score for their counsellees, whereas others believe in representation that actually reflects their performance. Some counsellors are awful orators with no profile in their own teams, whereas others are forceful individuals who have the ear of the decision makers. Given that you are assigned a counsellor at random, a significant contributing factor to the success of your year-end review is pure luck. I personally only had excellent counsellors at EY and did very well out of this framework, but I've seen enough people get screwed over to know that it would happen to me sooner or later.
2. Working on projects with low-visibility to one's team leadership can feel pretty thankless and demoralising. £1 of new money is worth £100 of old money, so people with client engagements that make internal business development difficult are at a considerable disadvantage to those who can spend their evenings working on proposals or regularly show their faces at head office. Much like my point around counsellors above, it is extremely frustrating to feel like whether or not you're going to have a good year is decided largely by a hand you are dealt.
3. At the time of leaving the firm, my team had a freeze on all external training courses and one of EY Advisory's flagship international secondment programmes had been effectively mothballed. There is a market-wide squeeze on margin right now; people applying to EY should consider the extent to which 'discretionary' spending, such as budget for employee learning and development, is a priority for the company.
