The job is filled with contradicting incentives. Managers have an incentive to complete work charging the least amount of hours possible (this way they can complete the work under budget and the engagement will be extremely profitable). Accordingly, some times they request staff and seniors to be "super efficient" and challenge the hours you put into a code.
Partners and senior management are all about utilization (the number of hours you charge to an engagement). We get weekly emails telling us where we are in terms of utilization compared to our peers. This year we have seen intense pressure on meeting our utilization goals. I would agree with another employee who said EY cares about three things, utilization, utilization and utilization...we should actually make it our motto instead of "quality in everything we do".
Other than the competing pressures and weekly utlization emails its a fine place to work in. My best advice would be to ignore the constant nagging about utilization and live your life. Unless you want to slave yourself to make it to partner I would highly encourage people to delegate and let other team members know that not everything is due "yesterday".
