Pros
- Some of the projects can be good for learning - Brand recognition
Cons
- Ridiculously low wages and bonuses for the insanely long hours required - Partners get very high disproportionate salaries compared with lower staff levels - Management is incredibly dishonest and they only present events/figures/KPIs in ways that serve them. For example, EY deferred promotions in the UK to 'protect the business', but it is actually a disguised cost save as they know people won't leave their jobs during Covid-19 times - Even though EY increased revenue significantly and achieved ALL KPIs for FY20, it decided to defer promotions blaming Covid. This indicates that EY puts money over people and disguises cost savings as 'helping the business' which is very dishonest - Insanely bureaucratic and secretive, even simple requests need a large number of approvals and the business is super secretive about sharing any information with employees. Way too much time is spent on admin requirements - Power and influence is highly concentrated in the hands of Partners and lower-level employees rarely have a say on things - There is no culture of mentorship in the business. Managers and Senior Managers only want to exploit junior members during projects and discard them afterwards when they don't need them. Therefore, there is little support for mentorship and little altruism/empathy - Since EY competes with other companies for projects, Partners and Directors discount projects singificantly to entice clients with attractive fees. However, 9/10 projects are dramatically under-staffed which means people work insanely long stresfull hours so that Partners/Directors can say they sold a lot of work to clients. Partners/Directors know this is the case and decide to screw people who execute projects even from the beginning through the way they structure projects. - Partners rarely talk to juniors and they often don't answer emails if you are not senior enough - Hiring policies are highly immoral as they try to get overqualified people to sign contracts for positions that are lower in rank than anywhere else in the market, therefore offering them lower wages than what they are worth - HR sides with the business 10/10 cases and there is no impartiality, therefore HR can't be relied on at all - A significant amount of travel is often required, therefore negatively work-life balance - IT is very poor, makes most projects a nightmare - Diversity at senior levels is a joke. Aprox. 90% of senior leaders are White British males - Moving across teams and functions is a highly opaque process which is also not encouraged. Therefore, lateral career progression is highly difficult - Highly unethical behavior around clients. Often projects set fees for people for positions that are more senior than in actuality to charge clients higher fees - EY uses its power as a large organisation to use and dump people on an ongoing basis. Leaders don't care about people leaving, it is business as usual for them and they don't even have a problem with that. Instead, they should understand why people leave and create a nurturing environment. - Everyone is afraid to speak up to Partners or Clients, even when they have insanely unreasonable demands. EY is a fear-based culture.