Pros
First off, I would like to say that I don't love my job. Taxes can be mundane and boring, but I love working at Ryan. This is mainly driven by the manager and teammates that I work with. In general, the workers that I get negative feedback from about the company have bad managers. Unfortunately, not all managers embrace the myRyan culture. There are also managers who are stingy when it comes to handing out bonuses. My manager allows me to be very flexible with my work hours and is very generous when it comes to bonuses. Understand that if you're looking to be employed at Ryan that the team you work on makes a huge difference in whether you like Ryan or not. The principals and Brint Ryan can't always control that, but if you don't like the team you're on, they want to retain you, so they'll let you explore options with other teams.
I also love Ryan because of the leadership of Brint Ryan and the principals. They are aggressive with their growth strategy, which gives us job security. They are also innovative with their work policies. Not too long ago, you had to put in 50 hour work weeks at a minimum to keep your job at Ryan. And trust me, Brint is putting in 50+ work weeks. He lives and breathes Ryan and is the hardest working person in our company, so it’s likely very difficult for him to implement a policy that says you don’t have to work as many hours as he does. But, he and the other principals took a huge risk in letting employees completely control their work schedule. It’s paid off big for me who doesn’t need to work 50 hours a week to achieve benchmark. Finally, the bonus structure gives employees the opportunity to earn bonuses higher than your salary. It’s a very generous incentive, especially if you’re one of the lucky few to be on a monster project. For me, I don’t get monster bonuses, but the ones I do are enough for me to make more than I would in a B4 firm and I feel a sense of accomplishment.
Finally, I can’t say enough about the unique business structure. Working on hourly projects suck; you have no flexibility on the amount of time you spend on a task and are always have to worry about billing enough hours to make it profitable, not enough hours to get the job done right. Consequently, you end up having to work those long hours just to make you revenue goals. Contingent projects give you the freedom to do the best job in how every many hours it takes you to do it. I never have to worry if I’m spending too little or too much time on a task.
Overall, I don’t know of any other company in our space or in another industry that offers such flexibility, generous incentive bonuses, and unique business structure. This is all because of the
Cons
Not all managers are created equally. There is little oversight on how managers implement myRyan or the incentive bonuses, so you can end up with a bad manager and everything I said above would not apply.
