Accurate review about working for HoganTaylor (especially during covid) - Assurance Associate HoganTaylor Employee Review

Work from home: Of course during the pandemic, it was required to work from home at first, but as time has gone on of course people have been allowed back to the office. That's great, but they internally marketed that you could be primarily from home, primarily from the office, or a mix of the two. All of a sudden, the lead audit partner has reversed that decision and reneged on the ability for some associates to work primarily from home. Managers are extremely pushy about going to client sites and the office, even though there's literally an unprecedented wave of covid going on. Additionally, HT expects (not on paper, but in practice) that employees work even after covid exposure, and even if you are sick you are expected to work or make it up over the weekend. Work life balance: This is nearly nonexistent, because there has been a mass exodus of employees at all levels. They have been promoting people who are not ready, and then getting angry with those associates when they struggle to get up to speed. Managers will email, IM, and text you late at night and the weekends asking you to finish something. Unless you disable these features from your phone, you will feel pressured to dedicate all hours of every day to this company. I knew employees who were severely ill or had family die and they felt bad for being gone even for just a day. Compensation: There are drastic variances in pay within positions. Of course that's expected if there is a significant variation in experience or qualifications, but there are huge differences in people of similar experience. This is mainly caused by giving newly hired recruits huge salaries and not giving good raises to the rest of employees. If you bring this up, they will black ball you and call you toxic. Random Stuff: Many associates left due to the stress and belittlement from managers and partners, and they have even taken petty retaliation measures against former employees. I won't get into too much detail here, because I don't want to out anyone, but they are doing things that drastically effect job prospects. I don't know what the managers do all day, but I can tell you that they don't manage your jobs. So if you come here as a senior, expect to pull the weight of a manager, otherwise you will roll onto jobs and the clients sometimes have no clue that the audit is happening. Every audit is a crapshoot, because the managers don't prepare the clients, track progress of our requests before the senior takes charge, and they don't formulate an audit plan. This leads to every job being past the deadline and over budget, including super stressful. Lastly, HoganTaylor is not keen on accepting criticism. SHortly after I started, there was a big meeting with the entire office in Oklahoma City where we were all sitting in a room and they agreed to have a dialogue with us... Instead it turned into every partner and manager talking about how they made $20,000 per year when they were our age (5 decades ago) and how they left HT before and came back, because everywhere else is so awful. The CEO even said "Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side, because it's planted on top of a septic tank.".... The disillusion is mind boggling. When I did my internship here, things were different, but all of the people who lifted other up and truly tried to make changes are no longer here, and all management and partners do is trash talk them to try to make them seem like they were the issues. There are still good people here, but the difference between my internship and now is that they seem like the soul is sucked out of them, and they are so stressed.