First, turnover is ridiculously high. They hire a ton of employees, use them until they burn out and quit or get fired. Worked there for a year and saw close to 100 employees quit or get fired (office is only around 130 people), and most contemplating the same. There are probably several reasons for this:
1. The hours are awful. 830 - 630 is mandatory, though no one will care if you roll in at 9 or 9:15 (depending on team director). If you leave at 6:30, people will ask why you are leaving so early. You will work past seven almost every night easy, usually, not leaving until 730 or 8. Even if you don't have any real work to do, management wants to see you there. Often, you will spend hours after seven waiting on management to review/ approve something for you that takes five minutes, which is frustrating. Tax season, you will be in the office until 9 or 10 and on the weekends. (they do get you food).
2. Billable Hours. Bonuses and judgement on amount of work done is based on billable hours worked. Important work for small clients is ignored for menial/ unnecessary work on bigger clients. Bonuses are contingent on meeting billable hour landmarks, but size of clients (and therefore amount of billable work) is not evenly distributed, so some teams are shafted on bonuses. Moreover, good work is only recognized for bigger clients, so certain teams "look good" to management over other teams.
3. Pretty high stress environment. As is the nature of tax consulting, you have statutory deadlines that must be met. You will have about four or five different people come by and ask you the same question about the same issue every day. Its good to keep track to make sure tasks are completed, but management suffocates employees.
4. Work Environment. You will be yelled at and cursed at on a daily basis and in front of peers, which is unprofessional and embarrassing. Training sessions are high stress environments as well as they are taught like a first year law class using the Socratic method.
5. No job performance feedback and the bit you get is unfair. The review of employee performance consists of the team directors discussing job performance of associates with each other and then ranking employees in various areas. In essence, you will be judged by a set of team directors with whom you have never worked with. Therefore, the only basis other team directors have of your performance is perception. Also, based on background (lawyer, MBA, science) you will be judged differently. Often, you will not know employees will not know they are under performing until they are fired. I've seen people fired in the middle of eating lunch at their desk. I've seen people fired on their birthday. People are fired at eight at night. Not good for morale.
This last point is a big issue. Merit isn't typically rewarded. The company wants people who are drinking the Kool-Aid. Management is smart, but isn't open to change or feedback and view it as a challenge.
Ignore the favorable reviews- most of those are written by marketing to provide better web presence.
