Company: KPMG
Date: 2009-06-02
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former

Cashing in on provinciality
Pros: Sells good on a resume. If you are lucky you can run across a few truly intelligent folks. Nice opportunity to be exposed to client senior management early on in one's career.
Cons: Clientele that is predominantly guaranteed consists largely of subs of int’l corporations with no local decision making authority whatsoever to pick their auditors. In addition, local subs frequently do not make the materiality line in parent consolidated figures. The result is superficial audit work and arrogant/rude treatment of client personnel. Statutory work is an also run category as corporate reporting prevails in significance. Large corporate clients can ignore qualified audit opinions due to local site immateriality. Low litigious risk. Lack of exposure to adverse action leads to presumptuous attitudes and an aura of invincibility. 
Field staff shows at client meetings unprepared and is ignorant of client staff scheduling commitments i.e. assuming client personnel standing by 7/24 to answer their questions even at odd hours. Pressure to come up with added value is evident rooting in skimpy rush audits dispensing with basic effort to obtain a grasp of client processes. Witnessed once an engagement partner being briefed first time regarding the audit during final meeting with client and in their presence. Partners reveal a reluctance to visit out of town field work venues and can get away with this for years on a row. They are there to shake hands with the client.
Expat staff mainly clogging senior positions are second tier fire outs from their home base offices. Hardly representing a cutting edge vanguard of their profession, they are and act like being in exile devoid of preceding int’l exposure let alone linguistic skills. Equipped with a one way ticket to nowhere as a stark choice to instant unemployment sets the tone of such involuntary career moves. Basically jealous and uebermensch bolting to seniority quick and clinging to it are the main drive. 
The wash thru business model at associate levels results in a faceless pool of uniform resources all seek rapid extrication from either up or out. Since mid level managers focus on saving their own skins only and embellishing their own resumes, this pool is largely abandoned as far as leadership is concerned. The result is the ensuing bullying at associate level with barely two years sufficient to latch on de facto manager roles the latter including performing staff evaluations even pushing others out. Basic office behavior standards aren’t met. Generally hostile negative environment. 
Managers rarely stand up for their staff. Blaming/berating low level associates even communicating this to clients to justify service failures do happen. In the reverse, pinpointing individual client staff members as roadblocks in completing audit missions also occur. So does larceny of client office supplies. 
Sales pitches and local marketing work mean low balling only netting ad hoc clients normally too small to need big4 audit work. It is prevalent practice to hire ex-government officials to install them at managerial or senior levels.