Pros
Accountancy qualification Career options when leaving Social side
Cons
My personal perception was that the audit branch of the firm had some potential ethical problems on many levels. I have been careful how to word my views to avoid my review being deleted. I and others experienced pressure to just get audits done and signed off. This created risks of audit issues ending up swept under the carpet. Under very tight time pressure it is difficult to resolve certain issues which could negatively impact relationships with audit clients and without sufficient management support. The relationship with the client often appeared more important than the actual audit work itself. This all meant that all the hard work and overtime felt essentially meaningless as the staff as audits would be signed off regardless. Staff are just being seen to do a lot of hard labour just to pat the client on the back and meet their deadlines. Very very stressful job which I found not rewarding in any way. The only good part was the colleagues and the training and development opportunities. If you are a person with a sense of ethical values and want to do something of purpose and meaning this may not be the job or company for you. It was in my opinion quite soulless work. The potential ethical issues also extended to the lack of care regarding employee wellbeing and work life balance Underpinning all of the problems, in my view, was a dogged focus on profitability for partners. Each year the budgets reduced and costs were cut and so pressure increased on staff to do more work in less time. Bonuses linked to profitability etc. Staff sometimes could feel pressure to not impact profitability of projects by recording a lot of overtime. It is easy to dismiss negative reviews as the result of some kind of personal conflict or disgruntled ex employee but this is not the case, this is simply what I observed.