BDO reviews

3.5

62% would recommend to a friend

(10,310 total reviews)

Pat Kramer and Peter van Laer

73% approve of CEO

57% positive business outlook

BDO has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 10,310 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The BDO employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Finanzas industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

10K reviews
1.0
Jun 25, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Not that I know of.

Cons

1. Most of the time, management does not communicate properly among themselves. All the Directors and the managers are overwhelmed by the workload, as are the rest of the employees. No one likes to talk to the audit partner, who always has a long face. When instructions given by the Directors and managers do not match the requirements of the audit partner, they withdraw or call off the action immediately, even if it's already in progress, resulting in a waste of time and money for the employees. 2. The Directors engage in dirty office politics and gossip with employees, creating a toxic work environment. Favoritism is rampant; if you are not in their favor, your days will be miserable, contributing to the high employee turnover. There is a lack of respect from management. The audit partner is rude to the Directors and managers, who, in turn, are rude to the employees. One Director even said to an employee: "The employees are just executors, and the Managers and Directors are reviewers. No one should hide things from the audit partner." 3. Many clients have provided feedback that we do not produce value-added outcomes for the engagement. Sometimes, the manager insists on including certain audit findings in the report. The management believes they are doing their best for the client, but they never understand or tolerate the client’s practices and situations. 4. The team is not innovative at all, leading to a lot of manual and time-consuming work. For example, employees are expected to take public transportation to the client office for fieldwork and can only take a Grab from the nearest MRT station to the client office (subject to approval from the engagement manager please note that the reimbursement process is longer than you thought). If you live far from the location, distance is not an excuse. They like to make the team do onsite fieldwork although all the documents kept in softcopy, the documents are sent through email. If the Manager or Directors want to know more about the testing, they command the employee to do it instead of running the test themselves. Sometimes, they may not even know what they want but are afraid of being questioned by the audit partner, leading to many things being handled off the table. 5. Unrealistic audit timelines are provided for every engagement. Management aims to look good in the numbers, ensuring no over-budgeting, which is why they strictly monitor the man-days. In other words, you will have to use your personal time to complete the remaining work. Every employee will experience backlogs during their employment. Most engagements are given one week to complete from scratch to drafting the report. In case of any delay, management blames the employees, never trusting them or believing that the delay was due to the client. They often ask: "What have you been doing in the past fieldwork? Why didn’t you chase the client for the outstanding documents?" They should understand that clients will not cooperate 100% because they also have their daily routine work.

1.0
Aug 1, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Other groups at BDO besides Transfer Pricing appear to be relatively functional. If I had been able to join any other group, or any transfer pricing group outside the East region, I might have formed a very different opinion.

Cons

Imagine that every time you get on a phone call with a client, your manager gets on the internal instant messaging system and tells you what to say. Imagine that your manager tried to persuade you that when this happened, you were "leading the call." Imagine receiving detailed monthly emails explaining to you how to set up Outlook appointments. Imagine having your career adviser tell you that in spite of 10+ years of professional education, your job was to act as a "secretary" to your manager. Imagine upsetting your manager because you asked for his opinion, only to have him tell you later that you need to ask for his opinion. That was BDO for me--in that one transfer pricing group.

1.0
Sep 6, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great brand in the market place. Free sodas in the offices, nice office spaces.

Cons

Phony leadership. Liars who stab each other and their managers and staff in the back. Poor leadership without true capability. Trying to be the 5th biggest firm but still operate as a mom and pop operation in so many ways.

Viewing 7 - 9 of 10,310 Reviews

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