temp cpa wrote: Minimum" required billable hours at EY busy season was 55hr/week for the span of those months. But trust me, in order to charge 55 hrs of actual billable hr, you're going to have to put in 70-75 of real working hours at least. No they do not post everyone's billable hours publicly but those are sent to your "mentor" and you get called in if your lacking. Lolz, ofcourse, everybody here at big 4 eat hours. Just depend on how big of a dumba$$ your manager is and how big of a pssy he is to speak up to a unattainable project. I was talking about audit. Its much easier in Tax as they always have work. As for travel hours, don't even bother counting that in, it counts as misc.

I worked in PA at a regional company as well (again about 30 people on my floor too, with a tax department below).  There definitely is a lot of office politics, but you have to know how to handle them.  You had to cater yourself to each partner or senior you were working with, and that's not always a bad thing if you can do it.  You definitely have to be careful with some people, I learned very quickly that you need to put everything in writing.  People conveniently "forget" that they spoke to you about something when you're getting reamed out for something not being done. 

The hours in the regional firm in the Auditing department were normal at about 60.  Your first year they didn't really get on you about hours, but the second year they expected you to be as billable as possible.  I crossed the lines and was in both the tax and audit so I didn't have a problem hitting my hours, but found the tax department worked a lot more hours than the audit department during tax season.  So my 60 hours always went to about 75.  Granted, the auditing department worked over time all year long, and the tax department (in this firm), didn't do that, only during tax season.

During the summer we had a lot of down time your first year, so we spent the majority of the time studying or doing administrative tasks.  As long as you made your rounds asking for work and hitting up the hr director for work, and they turned you down, you were fine.

As long as you keep your head down, keep your comments to yourself and play the 'game', you'll be fine. 

make sure you get the incomer training notes well in advance and go over them.  For example, the "deloitte approach".  Ask for as many notes in advance as possible, and do over the internship.

Take 2 classes in Excel and get a book at barnes and noble.