Pros
EY brand name EY has such a good reputation that everybody appreciates you for working there. Not just your family and friends, but even your clients really respect you. Being an auditor at the client's place has it's own perks, like respect and hospitality(even when not asked for). And it commands a lot of respect on your resume as well. The office building and facilities are of a high class quality(at least my office being headquarters of EY in India was definitely so). I was pleasantly surprised when I first saw the reception and the lobby area of my office, it is really nice, posh if I might say. Plus the people who work there are high quality people. Clients and work The type(size, domestic location, industry) of audit clients you get allocated to depends on the team you have been allocated to. But cross-team engagements also take place depending upon demand and supply. I also got an opportunity to work with the EY Global Shared Services in the Statutory Audit division during their busy season(again cross team working depending upon demand and supply) although the quality of work there is inferior, and it involves manual cut, copy, paste, arrange, highlight etc. work without too many learning opportunities at the junior levels at least. But generally there is a wide variety of clients that one might get an opportunity to work with depending upon various factors such as your performance, availability, team affiliation, client affiliation/experience and repeatability of work etc. Each partner has his own team comprising of 20 to 40 people on average( this number fluctuates and varies over time and situation). So basically each team is pretty big and you get to work with other such teams as well under the Statutory audit division as mentioned above. Operational stuff Also you don't have to worry about any administration related problems be it getting salary on time, getting reimbursements, transport(cab facility for Gurgaon office) and travel arrangements, hotel and stay facilities, stationery, high spec and new laptops etc. Leaves and reimbursements depend on the policy and the manager in charge's discretion.
Cons
The work hours are not good. You will be working most saturdays and quite a few sundays. You will always have to get used to working late in the night depending upon requirements. But between engagements, there are days when you get to leave at the normal working hours that is 5:30 in the evening, but such days are very few and are like blessings(maybe twice in a month or even less). For my first ca final attempt preparation, I got 3 months of leave for those interested. There is a lot of work. There is always a shortage of people. There is a lack of organisation and even coordination most of the time. Lots of work is done last minute and hence it gets very stressful at that time. Plus your experience will vary from one team in statutory audit to another. There are times when I had to sit after working hours without any work for the sake of giving company to my team members which I find very unprofessional especially when it stretches late in the night and when the work can be done tomorrow or when the work could have been managed better during the office hours. Working late on a regular/daily basis leads to complacency, less efficiency and wastage of time. This is a very casual and unprofessional attitude that I got to see in the firm. People make working in the firm their life, which is why they tend not to have a life outside the firm. Sometimes, even efficient people resign to the long working hours and the the laid back or leisurely attitude that comes with it. Even if you try to break out of this mold, people will look down upon you as if you are not working as much as them, which in reality is not true, so eventually you have to give in. And the work never finishes. Once you are done with your work for the day, some senior will probably provide you more work just before you are about to leave. So leaving with the team becomes the norm, no matter what. This was something I found to be very wrong in the work culture and that needed drastic improvement. Also, during the initial phase, I was sitting idle for months at a stretch. I was allocated temporarily to work at EY Global Shared Services which required me to do a very inferior quality of work(seemed like manual labour with nothing new to learn) for three consecutive years (for periods ranging from 1 to 3 months each year). And then one manager had the cheek to shout at me in front of others that I didn't know any work, even though I was trying my best and putting in the time. What does he expect if my allocations are so poor? Despite the cons(and maybe even due to them), overall I would say I learnt a lot of valuable lessons and gained from this experience.