PwC reviews

High level of nepotism resulting in sub-optimal managerial personnel, leading to low quality mentoring (silver lining - great opportunity for self development and growth). Nepotism in promotions and lack of clarity for career growth criteria. Long working hours. High drop-out rate (toxic dep head) resulting in project discontinuity. Low pay.

- The firm is governed by the satisfaction of its partners, in an environment where unrealistic expectations, unreasonable requests and lack of empathy are just the status quo. These people forget that outside of PwC, they're not anything special. - I had a lot of partners that did not have children and were not married. When I started to implement 'boundaries', which they touted throughout the New Hire//On-Boarding Process- responding to requests with "I see your request and will get to it promptly. I am getting my daughter dinner, I will get you X,Y,Z to you within the hour" made after 5:00 PM. On one of my Snapshot Reviews my manager quoted this response I gave a partner, as having "daughter issues"- Apparently those were the verbatim words of my partner. - Another partner communicated that my response time, left much to be desired. I went through 8 weeks of correspondence between this partner and I, averaging an 8 minute response time between receiving an email/request from him and responding. At one point in time, I had a partner tell me that she felt 30 seconds was a reasonable response time, because that's the level of urgency she expects. This is despite company policy stating that we had 45 minutes to respond to communication from partners. - Many of my co-workers who thrived in our role, had male partners that often drank too much on work trips and would say wildly inappropriate things, contact them on their personal cellphones late at night and/or on weekends, send them overly gratuitous gifts, make comments about how attractive they were or ask how their significant others felt about their working relationship. - My manager did not hide her distaste for me. Often times we were told to answer work emails and correspondence from our cars- I was pulled over and sited for holding my mobile device in my hand while driving, because I was using talk-to-text to construct a work email. I had to go to court in an attempt to settle/dismiss the $550 ticket. When I told my manager that because of this, I had to take a team call from my cellphone without the use of my camera. She told me that this was yet again an example of my inability to appropriately plan and that this was unacceptable, despite many people taking meetings from Happy Hour, the car, a park or a family event. I had partners not respond to emails or messages, not provide me accurate information or not provide information at all - Regardless, my manager many times told me this was entirely my fault and no excuse. - I had a peer tell me that she felt my response time to one of her emails was too long and asked that I be removed as a backup to one of her partners. I approached my manager and explained that I had allocated 'Out of Office' time daily on my calendar to account for dropping my daughter off at school- When I also noted this to my peer, she said my excuse was unacceptable. It was later disclosed to me that replacing me as backup to my peer's partner, was at the suggestion of my manager. - Honestly my list goes on and on. This role gave me debilitating anxiety where every time my work phone went off, I felt sick to my stomach because I knew I had probably done something wrong. I was never given any sort of positive feedback, words of encouragement or appreciation for the effort I would make to support my partners. I worked vacations, weekends, holidays, and late nights (fulfilling requests from partners traveling overseas)- One of my partners was quoted by my manager as saying; "I have no issue with her work. I'm just not wowed by it".... This partner had never once approached me with an issue in my work performance and I spent an entire vacation trying to find him and his girlfriend transportation to a Ski Lodge during a blizzard warning and hazardous road condition notices that many car services would not commit to driving during. This partner never gave me a single Real Time Recognition and was incredibly underwhelmed and thankless from any attempt I made to support him. My last day at PwC, while unexpected and obviously not greatly timed- Was the best thing that could have happened to me. I was in a tremendously poor mental and emotional state from the feeling of perpetual disappointment and operating under a microscope. I watched many peers of mine that had been doled out partners that valued their assistants, showed an iota of interest in the lives of the people making their lives easier, or the ones who had no idea what professional/appropriate boundaries were and filled the cliche boss/assistant quid pro quo themed dynamic do exceedingly well and become favorites of leadership. My experience was far from that, Was I a perfect employee? No, surely not. Especially not towards the end, but I have historically and consistently exhibited a rock solid work ethic and pride in everything I do- So.... I'm gonna go ahead and say that it wasn't just me that was the problem.