Long hours, slave labour, highly political, old technology, people from an old world locked in a Big Four firm. Technology is backwards, you have to purchase your own monitors, benefits are almost nil.

Politics, Politics and politics.
A bunch of folks that don't want to change.
If you want to be productive, don't expect technology to be there.
The way EY does things is to throw lots of people into it and who survives.
Blaming culture.
Hugh resistance to change.

If you have a good GPA (3.5 ), strong leadership experience, and a record of showing initiative, you will not have difficulty in finding your way into this firm. It's not a piece of cake, but it certainly is not extremely difficult to get in.

There is a lot of training opportunities and promotion opportunities at EY. They certainly emphasize growth and learning, and to be promoted, you must show your willingness to learn and your desire to grow.

EY truly emphasizes their "people first" culture. As much as the work may be tedious, the people are truly awesome. Even as an intern, they take a lot of time to make sure you understand your role and your work. The people definitely made it a more casual and "fun" place to work. Also, the company is quite relaxed on dress, requiring business casual, so you could wear polos and khakis in the office. (If you are at a client, you may be required to wear a suit.)

As an tax intern in New York, EY pays ~$24/hr.

As a tax intern this summer, I was provided ample experience in the tax practice. However, finding work was sometimes difficult and spread around disproportionately, as I ended up with days of no chargable work while others received overtime everyday. In the end, I did not have enough passion with tax to continue with it at this point, and I feel that you must have a true interest in tax to be a tax professional, and those that I worked around certainly had that passion. I did not.

I work for the Business Advisory practice at EY. The company growth is:

Advisor (2 years)
Senior Advisor (3 years)
Manager (3-5 years)
Senior Manager (3-5 years)
Partner (greatly varies)

At the analyst level, there is a lot of talk about diversity and equality. However, once you get to upper management, you start to feel the elitist and hierarchical structure. I think the company tries to push for a relationship between the upper mangement and analysts, but the relationships feel forced and never that comfortable.

I was hired in Advisory for EY in 2007. My base salary was $58,000 with a signing bonus of $4,000. I relocated and received a relocation bonus of $1,000.

There are a lot of politics and a lot of favoritism here at EY. Entry-level positions don't feel it much, but you can definitely feel it as a manager or director. On the surface level, we talk about a people first culture. On the inside, the company always puts the client first and works you very hard in order to meet deadlines. My bosses don't seem that sympathetic to do amount of work that I do.

I was hired in 2007 at a starting salary of $50,000 with no signing bonus. My current salary is $60,000. There are no year-end bonuses and salary raises greatly depend on your review. All travel expenses, including hotel, meals and trasportation are paid for by EY.

Do not work at this place if you apply for admin or support staff positions. This is a results driven environment, so if you are not directly contributing to the clients, then you will get no respect. You will receive no thanks, no credit, and no promotions as an admin

Accounting does not thrill me. I plan on working here for another year to two years to learn about the "language of business", get my MBA, then take my knowledge and experiences into industry. Don't get me wrong, the people here are great, its just that Tax just doesn't get me up in the morning.

The experienced hire program is not that great. The firm is not open minded to new ideas and does not value outside industry experience knowledge. Instead of trying to incorporate what you know, the company will try to make you accept everything that is EY.

I feel that the opportunity for advancement is not there. A lot of the mangement always gives the possibility of promotion as an incentive to work long hours and work on high profile projects. I am a Director and feel that my growth has peeked.

The company stresses diversity, but I have seen very few minorities around the office and few woman at the Senior Manager and Partner levels. They pretty much engrain the idea of diversity in your head, so if you're a woman or a minority, you have a strong chance of getting hired.

Your opportunity to grow in Business Advisory is very strong. If you don't meet the standards of our practice, then you will be let go pretty fast. If you meet the standards and exceed them, then you will move up within the firm. The tough part is that if you are not placed on a project where you can take ownership of the work and excel, then you will not be promoted. So it pretty much depends on your luck with projects. If you are lucky enough to get on a high-profile client, then you better work very hard so that you can get promoted with the work that you do for that client.

We definitely have some varied hours over here. It completely depends on the project that you get staffed on. I've only worked a couple 2am days, but some of my colleagues have been burnt out from working till 4am every day of the week during the busy seasons! It's a little extreme, and the competitive environment makes you not want to stay and help out because you know that it will be your turn to stay up that late very soon.

People know my firm and know the reputation. If you can make it here, then you can definitely make it in any other company. The culture is very competitive, and even if you work hard and have strong talent, you need to learn how to work politics and have a Manager or Partner take you under his or her wing. If you can handle the stress, then you can succeed in this environment

Dress is business casual in the office. The only time I find myself wearing a full suit and tie is when we go out and meet with clients.

You can have an excellent career at EY; however, you need to know how to play the game. You need to be able to handle the extremely competitive environment, know how to handle politics, and really make an effort to stand out. You will always be up for review, but if you have worked hard and have created value, you will be greatly rewarded.

When you are inbetween projects, you are highly encouraged to work on talent development. You can go to training sessions that will prepare you for the next level of your career in the audit field. The training sessions aren't the most thrilling in the world, but they definitely are informative and will give you some valuable skills that you can carry with you to any future career.

Everyone at the company is very smart; however, people will step over you to get what they want and move up within the company. I feel that I can learn and grow from all these smart people, but the price is that I constantly have to look for ways to get ahead and get noticed at the expense of another person.

In 2006, my salary as a Tax Accountant was 60K. You do get a pay raise if you have a CPA or if you have a masters in Tax.

You will travel for about 80% of your work time in Business Advisory. It sounds fun, but the truth is that the travel will definitely play a big toll on your body and moral. Employees know that the environment is fierce, so we fly in ealry on Monday morning to get a head start and leave the client site late Friday evening to get home. We put in the extra hours because we know that if we don't, someone else will and they will get the recognition.