Grant Thornton reviews

I knew by the end of my first day orientation at GT that I was going to need a NEW new job when I learned about the flexible time off policy. At GT, you can take as many weeks of vacation as you want, as long as you put in the 1870 or so billable hours for the client and another 300 or so hours towards training, writing proposals, and schmoozing at GT events. Excluding ten holidays per year, that means that you are expected to put in about 2170 or so hours over 50 weeks of work. Do the math, and you are doing nearly 44 hours per week even if you take zero weeks of vacation. Add an hour a week of additional work for each week of vacation that you would like to take. So yeah, you can take off half the year if you like, if you can get your team leaders to approve it and want to commit to working 70 hours per week for the other half of the year. Not for me! I'm too old and cynical to believe that I'm going to make partner if I work my tail off. I also hated that the clock reigned supreme. We had to enter our hours down to the quarter hour, and the ADP software was programmed to send a reminder to you to enter your hours for the day by 10 am the next morning, and if you fail to meet that deadline, you get a warning or a demerit or something. I stayed on top of it, but it all fed into my perception that I was just a revenue-generating unit within an impersonal bureaucracy. I was working in the federal practice at GT, and before I came to GT I had already worked as a contractor at federal agencies where I worked 40 hours per week and would get paid overtime if I was asked to work beyond that. I also contributed to proposals, but it was considered an optional activity. And I didn't have to schmooze constantly to get put onto new projects. I left GT to accept an offer with one of these smaller companies that offered me a much better opportunity with higher pay and more flexibility on the lifestyle items. Also, this may be a pro or con, depending on your background: I was in the data analytics practice, but culturally I am a techie, not a business major. I felt that business majors would feel much more at home at GT than techies who are used to being less buttoned-down. Everyone was smart and helpful, but it wasn't really my tribe, and I didn't expect that over the long term I was going to fit in very well, which was ultimately going to hurt my ability to get staffed on teams.

Pay is not ideal, but the culture and opportunity make up for it. FTO Policy: I hear a lot of complaints about the new FTO policy, I don't mind the changes because the FTO policy is still great compared to other companies. But they do make you jump through a ton of hops to get approved.