Company: KPMG
Date: 2011-06-09
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

Truly terrible technology
Pros: From having worked at two Big 4 firms, I'm convinced most aspects of the people and work are very similar.  See other reviews for positives of working for one of these firms.
Cons: My computer takes 10 minutes to start up, on a good day.  Sometimes it takes 10 minutes to shut down, too.  Windows Vista is incredibly slow, and there are no current plans to upgrade to Windows 7.  Office 2007 crashes at least once a day, and there are no current plans to upgrade to Office 2010.  Adobe Acrobat crashes at least once a day, and there are no current plans to upgrade to Acrobat X (although Adobe's products are so terrible I'm not sure that would help).  The intranet applications work ok, when you're in the office.  Try and get anything done on VPN, and it's like you're back in 1996 on a dial-up modem, even if the Internet connection you're on is fast, has low latency, and no packet loss. 

The only thing KPMG has that is slightly better than my old Big 4 firm is the time sheet software.  Everything else is worse.  When you have a job where you spend 50+ hours a week on a computer, consider this very carefully if you have alternatives.