My Politically Incorrect Perspective on Big 4 Culture
I've worked in the Big 4 consulting game for a over 4 years now and I wanted to shed some light on their culture. Disclaimer: my interpretation of PWC and Deloitte is only based on anecdotal feedback from colleagues/ friends who are working there, and my interactions at bidder meetings.
Caveat: this perspective applies to Asia-Pacific and the United States
EY: Dyslexics untie, Alcoholics Unite, High school 2.0
EY is essentially an amalgamation of alcoholics who seem to stay sober during work hours, but let loose at any time they can. I've worked in both industry and other consulting roles, but I had the most fun at EY. Can't recall the number of times I would rock up to a party/ Friday night drinks and see a partner, who would be a down-right straight-shooter during business hours, let loose buying shots for everyone and dancing with his shirt undone. Although EY is full of extremely smart people, there were so many instances I could recall in which juniors would get away with making stupid errors in front of clients, but because of the relationship no one really gave a shit.
KPMG: Jack of All Trades, Master of none
KPMG dabbed in most forms of advisory/ consulting service, but it never really went extremely deep in any particular area apart from audit and bread+butter FDD. Some KPMG offices were essentially body shops and this will be the reason why it will never grow and improve it's brand reputation in the long-term. KPMG's culture has much to be desired. It's essentially as if you were reliving your group assignment days at University, when everyone would work individually but come together only when they need to. This is the result of KPMG's perpetual acquisition pipeline. That is, because KPMG is forever acquiring new businesses, there is continuous change and people tend to physically sit and stick with their superiors who will buddy them up at the next roundtable. This behaviour is quite evident in most divisions and it's a real let down in all honesty.
PWC: I think, therefore I am
PWC is continually number 1 among the big 4, although their strengths DO vary significantly from geography to geography e.g. PWC is heavy banking focused in Australia, heavy Financial Services in London. PWCers pride themselves on their firm's flexible working arrangements by expressing their undying love of their firm's policies on linkedIn. PWC partners are forever balding and seem to be the most arrogant out of all of the big 4 (based on my interactions with them in deal meetings), their implicit authority is almost unpalatable, but felt by most PWCers from Manager down. PWC seem to pigeon hole their staff very early on in their career, and once pigeonholed in a particular sector it's hard to break out.
Deloitte: Toxic culture, self-serving leadership
This statement is an overall summary of the feedback i've received from my network. Whether people had / are having good/ bad experiences, they all seem to say the same thing: it's extremely toxic.
I've heard some shocking stories about clicky circles and self-serving partners/directors and individuals being asked to leave or managed out. Deloitte also appear to dabble in anything they can possibly do without any true depth. So I'd highly recommend you to do your research on Deloitte as it applies to your geography and validate any of the above.
Thought I'd share some insight / comic relief so don't grill me too hard because of your deep-rooted firm faction.
You nailed Pwc. Don't know why but anyone I know there shares like 100000 Pwc posts a day about Pwc.
They had a social media hashtag campaign a few years back, like #auditpride or something. The kool-aid just makes you cringe so much.
REALAUDITHOURZ :FIRE: :100:
At the rate this site is going, we'll get an accounting forum before a quant finance section.
Touche... I've always said point me to more than a handful of discussions over a few years months that would justify an entirely new forum container.
Example... Real estate finance forum didn't exist around 4 years ago and is now #2 in popularity. I think a Quant finance forum would have a place, but isn't that a subset of trading and/or hedge fund forum?
These hesitation to add forums is the difficulty of having to review and move every forum post that is placed in the wrong bucket (10-15%)
Fair, and to clarify I did mean that as a joke as I remember the last discussion about this.
However I disagree that quant finance should be bracketed into groups like S&T or HF. At least not for long; banks are piling into derived data sales, and increasingly there are new product offerings that are essentially enabled by a bunch of financial engineers / data scientists writing Python scripts. But it isn't yet widespread, so I see where you're coming from.
Where I agree that there might not be a place for it here yet is in attracting that crowd to WSO. I think that the userbase here is driven at least partially by the career guides, so I'm not sure of the kind of "talent" we'd attract to a QF forum given that there aren't QF guides. In other words I'd rather help Cinderblock's mom find a husband than argue with a sophomore at Villanova about QF topics. We need an edge against specialist sites like Quantnet, NuclearPhynance etc. before establishing a QF forum.
I agree, we don't need a quant forum.
Second the EY alcoholism part... loved my Friday nights there.
They’re all equally as shit. End of.
Thanks bro. A lot of people work there whether we like it or not, so don't go shitting on people's careers.
Nice sentences from you. Always good write.
Not an accountant, but my friend at Grant Thornton described it as very cult-like and conniving.
All 4 are the same.
Bean counters so of course they all have plenty of time to drink
EY and PwC seem accurate. KPMG sounds mostly accurate too. I don't know anyone who "loved" Deloitte, but Idk if they'd say it's toxic.
big 4 really vary from group to group, location to location, practice to practice.
But all will ream you in the ass for 80 hours a week at 60k salary and 2000 bonus.
Ponzi scheme.
Always though a career there was risky AF. Spend 20 years working 80 hours a week getting massively underpaid so that you have a chance to make Partner.
Agreed.
Also, I think the work they do isn't differentiated. Meaning, you never look at a Q/K and have more assurance based on who conducted the audit.
I don't think Deloitte is toxic, but you hit the nail on the head with "dabble in anything... without any true depth." When I was there, a Senior Manager starts talking at dinner about how he was approached by an ex-Deloitte guy about the firm helping this guy's company with an ICO. Senior Manager did his best to explain the ICO, and how they would use the money to do acquisitions before doing an IPO. Was convoluted as shit. He said he barely understood it, and a staff tried to explain cryptos to the table. Don't know where that went but there was gonna be a follow-up lol
Honestly that’s all you do in B4 - pretend to be an expert in something you have little idea in.
Key is to use business speak that means nothing and be confident. Any real businessmen who may use your services will see right through it. Others just use it to get a rubber stamp of approval.
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