Company: KPMG
Date: 2015-04-22
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

Great if you can play the game, otherwise stay well clear
Pros: Looks good on your CV - you will work on big name clients although worth noting that many firms are becoming aware that compliance at KPMG is all outsourced and therefore your skillset is more project management rather than technical.
Project work - if you can get involved in fund structuring work then you can make it sound more interesting than what it actually was (most likely a copy and paste job), again this looks good on your CV.
Good training - no need to put any effort in yourself to keep up to date technically as training is all organised for you.
Good benefits package including access to discounts for certain retailers - useful if you shop a lot.
£3.20 lunch allowance - this covers a sandwich and a piece of fruit.
Large organisation - allows you to move internally if you're not happy in your current department, during my time there a quarter of the team took advantage of this.
Process driven - due to the high staff turnover there are good processes in place so that work can be picked up easily by new joiners.
People - there are so many people that you're likely to meet other people you really get on with.
Partner - the guy who led the team was a good leader and clearly ambitious, unfortunately I didn't spend a lot of time working directly for him.
Cons: Politics - if you want to get on with your work and do a good job then you won't get far unless you also get involved in playing the game. 
Bad management - due to the promotion of staff based on personality (i.e. ability to brownnose) rather than merit, there are people who have titles above their capability level, unfortunately if you're managed by someone like this you won't learn a lot and work will get sent out with mistakes leading to the blame game.
Hours - the team was under-resourced and you'll be expected to work weekends (management assume you won't have any plans as they don't).
Culture - tight deadlines will be agreed with the client and most of your work will be 'urgent' which leads to a pressurised working environment, this links in with the bad management point as some staff haven't developed their planning skills enough.
Lack of knowledge - the basis for the compliance is to follow historic treatment and copy the prior year even if there are no reasons for this documented anywhere, you're not going to learn with this approach.
No breadth of experience - each team is an expert in a specific area, if you stay in the team for long enough and want to move to a broader role it can be difficult to show that you have a breadth of experience in terms of client base and technical issues encountered.
Lack of team spirit - it wasn't a pleasant place to work and the team weren't supportive.