I've seen a few reviews state that Ryan is a great/good/decent place to start your career. Here's why it's the exact opposite:
When you get hired, you're either an "experienced hire" or a regular hire. Experienced hires in this case may have direct experience (they come from a competitor where they performed the same basic job functions), or indirect experience (their previous work had direct similarities to their job at Ryan, but was not the same job; e.g. you worked for a REIT and now you'll be a property tax consultant).
Experienced hires have significantly higher salaries, which makes sense since they are more valuable starting out. However, regular hires obviously become experienced at some point, but Ryan has no mechanism for recognizing this. Therefore, someone who comes in as a regular hire will generally always be paid significantly less than experienced hires regardless of results, education, ability, responsibilities, etc.
Imagine two people, we'll call Ralph and Betsie who graduate college together. Ralph lands a new job as a Property Tax Consultant at Ryan, and Betsie lands the same job but at Ryan's competitor, Lame Tax Consulting. Ralph has a starting salary of $41,000 which he thinks is decent. Over the next 5 years, Ralph performs admirably and earns a 5% raise each year, now making $52,328. Betsie's company goes under and Betsie calls her old friend Ralph who manages to get her a job on his team in the same position he has. But Betsie is now an experienced hire, so Betsie gets hired at $70,000.
Both Ralph and Betsie now have 5 years of experience, they have the same responsibilities, the tax savings they generate over the course of the next year is within $10,000 of one another - meaning their revenue is within a couple hundred dollars - but during his 5 years, Ralph also managed to earn a master's degree. When raise and promotion comes around in October, they will both earn 5%, now making $54,944 and $73,500, respectively. Ralph will never be paid what Betsie is paid, despite being equally valuable to the company (in some ways Ralph is more valuable because of his familiarity with Ryan's policies and procedures).
Even if Ralph is promoted above Betsie, he will not catch up to her salary-wise. He may get 10% instead of 5% (though that is unusual).
Ralph's only hope of being paid his market value is to leave Ryan, to the detriment of his team.
Hence Ryan has created a system whereby it incentivizes the resources it has spent thousands of dollars training and grooming, to leave precisely when they become most valuable to the company.
