Company: KPMG
Date: 2012-11-27
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

No Work/Life Balance and No Appreciation = Time to Quit
Pros: -5 weeks of PTO and at times, flexible schedules 
-Learn a lot of technical skills in a short amount of time
Cons: -Work/Life balance does not exist. I worked in the Real Estate Tax group and management expected you to be available to work at all times, such as midnight in early November. When you are not in busy season, they will loan you or your support out to another group so even when you are supposed to have a 9-5 type of schedule, you do not. I believe a lot of this has to do with the partners getting pressure to keep everyone's utilization up
-Zero appreciation for the work you do
-No communication regarding staffing or changes within the group
-Almost everyone below manager absolutely hates their job
-No action is taken on feedback; they do not care about workplace satisfaction because they will burn you out until you quit because there are 25 people willing to replace you at any moment
-The lack of variable compensation for the people putting in the most hours is terrible, if there even is any
-If you are valued within the group, they sometimes block you from transferring to another group or doing a rotation
-Mixed messages regarding how to use the offshore team and the associates
-Poor planning leads to the same people being overworked or underutilized. Essentially, the better performer you are, the more work you get
-Related to the point above, the few good people in the group become frustrated and burnt out, and leave
-The partners only care about the bottom line, so you hear a lot about firm/group performance. However, when the firm/group does well, you do not share in any of the benefits. Why should I kill myself for a modest salary without overtime to make money for other people?
-The ratings system is meant to be a 5-point scale, with 1 being the top performers and 5 being the equivalent of a pink slip. However, in this group, only 3s and 4s are given. These low ratings impact compensation and ability to do rotation
-There are no real role models in the group for non-management. All of management has been there for 10+ years and have a very distorted view. Additionally, there are no minorities and very few women in senior management
-For such a large and profitable firm, the benefits are very mediocre, especially medical and the 401(k) match
-The firm rescinds any 401(k) matching contributions to employees that leave before spending 5 years with the firm. I realize they don't want to pay it for short-term employees, but given the mindset of burning out your resources, this makes the 401(k) match non-existent for most