Company: KPMG
Date: 2008-08-26
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

Open and honest communication my butt!!!
Pros: KPMG looks great on a resume, and at least initially you learn quite a bit from working with clients in various industries.
Cons: As a KPMG employee you will get a constant barrage of propaganda about the firm's Employer of Choice initiatives, which you will find to be a huge annoyance once you discover that all of this is just lip service. A lot of the work-life balance initiatives look great on paper, but in reality they usually only work for the support staff. For the majority who are in client service roles, these initiatives are often ignored in the name of client need and most often in the name of partner greed. 

You'll find that you are paid well below what you could earn outside the firm, and the benefits for the most part suck. There is a pension and a 401k, however the 401k has a five year match on firm contributions which means that most employees will not realize that full match because they get run out of the firm much before that. Of course if you don't leave voluntarily and get laid off you are still held to the 5 year vesting schedule, which for me meant I lost 40% of my firm match to the plan. 

What the leadership truly sucks at is communication. They are quick to share what they think is positive news, but will absolutely avoid discussing difficult topics at all costs. Through several rounds of layoffs this year not a single word had come from anyone in leadership about what is going on. Even last year they disappointed nearly everyone in our group when they slashed or completely eliminated performance bonuses at year end. The excuse was that our financial results weren't as good as expected, although national leadership posted only a couple of months prior that the firm was meeting its targets and that 90% should expect to receive a bonus near the level of prior years.