Koch reviews

1. The entire accounting and tax environment that I experienced can best be described by two words: chaotic mess. At any given time in any given group, a majority of people are not going to know what is going on (See point 3 for lack of training). There are constant fire drills, and disorganization causes even simpler tasks to take 5 times as long as they should. 2. Turnover is through the roof (for good reason). Accounting and tax positions below the controller/manager level are just a continuous revolving door of 20-somethings straight out of college. This only exacerbates the already chaotic environment, and hurts morale. 3. Training is non-existent, which is extremely frustrating given the complexity of the work you will be expected to do. Much of it involves Koch specific processes that there is no way you could have even learned in school. This is a recipe for a nightmare situation if your direct supervisor doesn't have a solid understanding of the work you're doing (which is likely to happen since people are constantly changing roles). Hiring tax professionals directly out of college is a relatively new strategy for Koch, and they are clearly not doing an effective job with it. Their CPA perks are a joke compared to public accounting firms as well. 4. Horrible work/life balance. The tax department likes to market itself as an alternative to the infamous Big 4 busy seasons, saying that work is more spread out throughout the year. The reality is that you will basically be in busy season year-round due to the constant entity restructuring transactions that take place. 5. Much of their technology is severely outdated, although to their credit they do seem to be working on this. 6. The atmosphere is extremely cultish. Be prepared to spend hours upon hours pretending that the points made in Charles Koch's books are profound and enlightening. This is minor, but it's definitely creepy.

Koch is a challenging technical environment, if you're working in IT. The company is working hard to get into the current decade technically, so things are moving very fast, which means there's a certain amount of chaos in the environment. To be successful here, embrace the change and the chaos. It's definitely challenging, and not the place to work if you want to do the same thing every day. The high rate of change means that there's a lot of uncertainty in the environment. Lots of reorg to try to keep up with the changing technical landscape. That can be disruptive and add time to the day just to keep everyone on the same page. Another potential con for some people is that this is not a coastal style workplace. While there is some flexibility depending on what you're doing, in general you're expected to work from 8 to 5 and to be in the office every day. For me, that isn't a big challenge, but I've heard some of our employees who've worked at more liberal workplaces complain at times that the Koch environment is just a little bit 80s in terms of work practices.