Pros
Tried but can't think of any. The only pro is that once you leave, you can say that you have been through hell. No more fearful Sunday nights, wasting 3 hours doing up timesheet for the past week. :)
Cons
The negatives are just too much for me to list down in a single post, hence I have tried my best to summarise them as follows: 1. Extremely high turnover rate at the Senior Associate level. For the tax team, the maximum number of Seniors at any point of time in the tax department is less than three. Yet somehow, the turnover rate for this position has been alarmingly high -even with the 1-year bond imposed on all new employees, the number of Seniors who left the firm in the past 1 year is approximately 5 to 8 (200% to 400%) Some left to the extent of breaking their bond and some left after having underperformed intentionally to be terminated by the firm. 2. To deal with the multiple factual 1-star glassdoor reviews made by Seniors who left on a bad note because of the bad antics and "tyranny" behaviour exerted over them by 2 of the longest-serving Senior Managers (SMs), they had to come up with the recent fake 5 star reviews in order to neutralise the increasing number of negative reviews. Take these 5-star reviews (aka "I love tax" and "Opportunities to grow" lmao) with a pinch of salt. 3. The tax department is top-heavy with SMs, who sit comfortably up the heirachy and use their power to instill fear in the Seniors and Associates. The level of their English language, both written and conversational, of the SMs, however, are at times atrocious and they rely heavily on the Seniors to come up with the quality work while they are always "busy" with some other non-tax related "work". At times, they review the work quickly just to throw it back out to the Seniors and you can tell that they did not even make an effort to review the work in detail when they overlook many points and make one too many assumptions. 4. The firm, or rather, the 2 SMs, are very resistant to providing training sessions to the Seniors and Associates. Much politics in the background led to the departure of an Associate Director (AD), who went ahead to propose and organise training sessions that would otherwise had been beneficial to the Seniors and Associates, even though the AD had joined just a few months prior. Their favourite excuse would be that the firm is not a training institute and that they advocate on-the-job training. The fact is that the SMs lack of sound technical knowledge and they let their insecurities of being corrected by the Seniors take over. 5. Most of the Seniors that had joined and left the firm within a year were from big four. One have to wonder what is it about the firm that make them decide to leave, having gone through even tougher times at big four? What is so undesirable about the firm? Food for thoughts... 6. The focus of the firm is always on the quantity of work produced, and not the quality. The Seniors and Associates are merely dispensable chess pieces. In order to cut cost, the management even resorted to hiring plenty of interns, who had to work till wee hours on that meagre allowance. I have seen interns' contributions being downplayed significantly in their internship review report despite the amount of hard work they have put in. 7. Micro-managing is real. Plenty of time spent on laughable admin procedures and processes. Shall not elaborate further. Plenty of feedbacks have been given but yet the nightmare continues. 8. Terrifying, emotional outbursts from a particular SM. On hindsight, it's probably just a case low EQ. If you are so unlucky to be allocated under her, be prepared for lots of team calls where 80% of the calls are essentially her ranting at you and on other unrelated matters. At times, the words used can be pretty aggressive and offensive. 9. Please read through all the recent negative glassdoor reviews (Madhouse LLP, Madhouse LLP 2 etc.). I only realised all the contents were true when i joined the firm. Don't make the same mistake as me!