I have experience working with E&Y Auditors from EY Manhattan office. They perform external audit and review at my old company. They were in the office for about 1.5-2 months per year, and I assisted the same group for ~3 years as Sr Acct.
They were overworked and not the brightest. Of the four staff that were with EY when I started, only one remained when I left. The three that left all left for corporate jobs. With the uncommon exception of when they were joined by their Sr Mgr, or the even rarer exception of when the partner was visiting, the only external audit staff present at our office were young and inexperienced. When I say young I mean younger than me (I am 30;) they varied from just out of college thru their late 20's. We would often talk about them behind their back, as they would often ask “stupid” questions that they should have known or researched on their own. It was basically the opposite of the type of behavior/professionalism that you study for the CPA exam.
I'm not the best person to ask as my experience is exclusively in private and corporate accounting, I just wanted to give you some idea of what I saw from the other side, from someone who worked directly with people from their main office here. I don't feel that the people from EY NY were smarter, nor did I feel that they were getting some kind of invaluable experience that I was missing out on. Now that I am old enough to look back in hindsight on my post-college career and my 20s, I do not regret my decision to stick to the corporate side of accounting. I only have one friend/colleague who actually stuck with a B4 firm past 30y/o. Almost everyone got burned out and moved on to another position in the corporate world.
With that said, I'm sure some divisions/groups are better than others. Similarly, some may be more personally fulfilling or provide more knowledge. With that said, if you put value on being able to stay at home, and have a more consistent work schedule, you may want to consider if pub accounting is right for you. Especially since corporate accounting experience is just fine for the license as long as you can make sure that your supervisor is a CPA.
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