Pros
Flexibility (somewhat) and Sick/Vacation time The only reason I would give this office any stars at all is for the amount of sick and vacation time that is allotted to each employee. They are also semi-flexible in that if you have to leave work early one day of the week, you can make up the hours you will miss throughout the rest of the week rather than use up any of your sick time. There is also not a set time you need to show up to the office in the mornings or a set time you have to leave in the afternoons. As long as you show up between 8 and 9 (some employees even push it to 10 though I would not recommend this) in the morning and stay at least until 4:30 - 5:30 you will be fine. However, as great as these pros may seem to some people, I would still not recommend this job or office to anyone.
Cons
-Poor Communication (across all levels on a project) -Unorganized Micromanagement -Lack of Training -New Hires will be moved from team to team constantly -You will be doing the work of call centers in India (but you will be working from Jacksonville) -Turnover Factory -Angry management leads to high-level stress environments To start off, there is a SEVERE lack of communication among employees, management, and clients on projects. You will have teams of employees working in the Jacksonville office reporting to managers who work remotely and travel the majority of their work weeks ( I had 5 managers I reported to on my first project, all of them were located in different cities across the U.S.) Therefore, the only communication that occurs is over email and the monotonous daily skype meetings in which you have to spend an hour to two hours every day listing and detailing every little thing you plan to do or have done that particular day. This can be problematic because your managers are not seeing what you do on a daily basis or see any issues/difficulties that arise within the project, so managers never fully understand what work is being done and for what particular reasons. This often causes tension when managers get frustrated that something is not getting done the way they want it to be and employees getting frustrated trying to explain and rationalize what they are doing. This lack of communication and observation leads to a very unorganized way or micromanaging employees because management will constantly email you and skype you throughout the day asking you to explain in detail what you are doing (this is precious time that could actually be used for work but hey, that's not how EY chooses to see it). New hires are also immediately frustrated upon entering the job because there are no formal training sessions or courses for the work that is offered in the Jacksonville SDC. No matter what team or department you are placed in, you will be told that your coworkers will teach you any skills or software you need to perform your job. Well that is not the case more often than not, because projects are on such tight deadlines and most employees are drowning in work and they do not have time to teach you the functions of your role. So if you accept this job, be prepared to defend yourself when senior management starts yelling at you for not knowing what you are doing in your first few weeks in the job. Also, new hires being the lowest people on the totem pole, you will be moved from team to team within your department. You will often be placed on the teams struggling the most with their work and their deadlines because management will think your presence will offer a magical solution to fix any and all issues that team is facing. Well with the lack of training and constant moving around (which prevents any real, functional knowledge to be obtained from any of the work you try to do) these problems will often not be fixed and management will just get even more angry and frustrated. The work itself is designed to be the exact same type of work as that of EY's India call centers and offices, however the SDC office model is meant to "reassure" clients that their confidential information will be safe because it is being handled domestically rather than being sent offshore to a foreign country. The work is uninteresting and unfulfilling due to this being the case. As you have probably noticed throughout this review, the angry management has been mentioned a few times. This creates a high-stress environment for lower level employees because you will be subjected to having a manager yell at a coworker as they are standing directly behind you while you are sitting at your desk trying to complete your work. This causes stress and anxiety because you can't help but feel like they will turn to you and start screaming at you next if you make any sudden movements or noise. All of these negative experiences and attributes of the job and work environment cause the Jacksonville SDC to become a turnover factory. Most people only make it a year at most, so people are constantly coming and going, making this a highly unproductive office. Please do yourselves a favor and DO NOT accept a job offer from this office. Please do not be fooled by the Big 4 Company name being associated with this office either, you will not be held to the same pedigree as true EY corporate offices. The SDC office model is just a way for EY to cut costs by bringing all of their outsourced, offshore work back to the United States, therefore, you could have the same title as someone working in a true EY corporate office, but you will be paid significantly less and will often have to report to them on projects.