Pros
They seemed nice during the interview process
Cons
Where do I begin? I took the job without ever meeting anyone in person and without seeing the office building beforehand (thanks, COVID). Upon arriving on my first day, I was really taken back by what poor condition their office building is in — cracked/missing tiles in the main lobby, creaking floors that caved in at spots due to poorly or unrepaired sub flooring, and disgusting restrooms. Plus the office itself is a dark hole with no windows unless you’re a manager or above with an outward facing office. That covers the aesthetics — now lets cover the oh so wonderful people. I was assigned to the ESG team. They seemed great during the video interview and addressed my concerns as far as looking to venture away from tax and gain experience in general ledger/full cycle accounting (that, after all, was the only reason I took this job and returned to public accounting after making my exit two years prior). This much turned out to be a lie. I joined in February so I expected to do tax work during this time. However it became apparent after the deadline that they had no interest in introducing me to anything outside of tax accounting — the returns just kept rolling in. Throughout busy season, no mention was made to me about the pace or quality of my work. If anything, I was offered assurance by at least one manager that this was a particularly challenging busy season — specifically due to the change to tax basis capital reporting for partnerships. This transition of course could’ve been much smoother if not for the inadequate, poorly constructed workpapers used throughout the firm. To go with their inadequate workpapers, nothing ever seemed to have referencing or any other tick marks tying journal entry amounts back to any of said inadequate workpapers. I made due where I could and then asked questions when needed (something that I feel is pretty typical of a staff/senior level accountant — otherwise you may as well bypass promotions to senior and just bump everyone from staff straight up to manager). Every time I asked a manager for help it was met with what seemed to be frustration if not a days or even week+ delay in response if the questions were posed via email. Although the delayed responses and frustrations could be because the managers don’t really seem to have much of a handle on what they’re doing anyway (I literally sat and watched a manager fumbled through setting up a simple multiplication function in Excel — I shudder to think what would happen if someone asked them to construct an Index:Match formula or even a simple rounding function). All of these issues combined would make one wonder why I stuck around. Well I was only there for 2.5 months (until less than two weeks after busy season ended) before they fired me. The reason they gave was a vague “we don’t feel that your work is living up to what we would expect of a senior.” That was it. I asked for further elaboration and they said nothing. Again, at no point during my short tenure with this disaster of a firm was I ever spoken to about the pace or quality of my work (actually the only real delay in my work occurred when a manager pawned a new client off on me that had been assigned to her by the CEO. The client provided extremely incomplete and insufficient information to complete a 1065 return so I informed the manager that she needed to follow up. This was met with crickets until the client called the CEO asking for an update. Then the manager finally chimed in and acknowledged that she needed to quit procrastinating). Furthermore, I’ve been promoted to senior twice at two different companies. First at LBMC but I resigned the day before the promotion would go into effect in favor of a staff position that would offer equal pay but with less hours. I worked at that position for a year before earning yet another promotion to senior after saving the company $40,000 by shouldering the workload of two people during our busy season. My work as an accountant speaks for itself. And to top it off they fired me when they even knew my wife and I were expecting a child in the next month. People leave reviews on here talking about the great culture and how wonderful this firm is? Spare me. This was by far the absolute worst work experience of my life. It’s a wonder that they have even managed to stay in business this long. Do yourself a favor and stay far away.
