KPMG reviews

Can do endless travel in hotels for work (depends on department) No tangible appreciation from management Peanut pay Endless 'busy season' with long hours from 9am to midnight (usually lasts from January to June, a bit of break from the busy season in July and August but September till November is again very busy.. so 9 months of busy season a year.) Not even a leaving card on my last day - and I have not been sacked but chose to leave! Everything partner centred - staff sacrifice their pay for partners (e.g. £1k bonus for first time ACAs scrapped in order to save £500k in total - this amount may equal a couple of junior partners' salary) and work (everyone has to obey them etc.) Everything is about the declining business, the business comes first (obviously) over staff learning/experience/development. Promised a year secondment but not kept the promise saying there was no business giving a day notice. Another bit of news - pension terms got less favouable now for new joiners and the existing pension terms were not that great..

Training on basic applications, such as proprietary software, and industry-standard software used by the firm was essentially non-existent. Managers generally have little or no interest in training new staff; the general attitude seems to be "sink or swim." As noted in the "Pros" section, management is very technically competent. Unfortunately, this is virtually the only factor considered or valued. People skills, training skills, and basic general management skills are, at best, considered irrelevant; at worst, they are looked down upon. Due to the nature of the industry and the personality types which are most suited to the work (especially compliance work), it is quite unusual to have both the necessary technical competence and people skills in the same package. Criticisms of work performance are frequently presented in hyperbolic terms, and can be startlingly personal in nature: "careless", "sloppy", etc., are frequently and casually thrown around even when there are a small number of insignificant errors. Accounting firms, especially Big Four firms, are known for a "churn and burn" culture: departures are frequent and tenures are not normally more than a few years. Due to a steady influx of young (and naive) students, there is very little impetus for change in the work culture. As an example, KPMG just recently allowed employees to begin wearing jeans on "casual Friday", more than a few years behind the curve.