Armanino McKenna Reviews

Pros

A company that has made a number of smart moves in the way of expansion. The internal staff is very pleasant to work with. They always seem to bend over backwards to get you want you need. Overall a good place to start a career at the entry level.

Cons

Not a sales culture. Employee recognition is very light. Performance Management is simply a check box. There is a lot of disconnect between management and the staff on the ground doing the day to day work. Management seems more caught up on rankings in the industry rather than team building and rewards for great work done. Also benefit contribution seems to be expensive.

Pros

the company has good health benefits
your schedule is flexible
there is a very good IT and admin support team
you are given supervisory responsiblity very soon

Cons

most of the time you fight fires
you don't have choice of what clients you work on
it's quite political
the profit sharing and compensation is inadequate

Pros

AMLLP is a good place to learn the basics of tax/audit/financial advisory. Also a good place to get exposure to tech clients.

Cons

AMLLP is now no different than a Big 4 accounting firm, i.e., your worth is estimated by the number of billable hours that you have.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop trying to make the staff (who have accounting mind sets and demeanor) to be sales people. Less stress on hourly goals

Pros

experience with smaller companies is good

Cons

limited industries available to learn about

Pros

For the record, I was with AMLLP's San Jose branch for about a year. It was definitely a decent place to work. You're not working in Disneyland, but they do put effort into making it a hospitable environment, they host employee events here and there that are actually fun, release tension and give a work family environment. Aside from tax season crunch time, I didn't hear of people being turned down for vacation requests or reasonable time off. Management that I interacted with were decent people trying to get a job done while leaving as many people satisfied as reasonably possible. Also their 401k and internal financial planning services were a cut above average.

Cons

Despite the surface pleasantries, there's some under the surface misery from some of the staff. Accounting isn't for everyone, and there was a significant contingent of employees that were in it for the decent pay, but were slowly watching their happiness drain away as the job brought them 0 fullfilment. I heard a few complaints about ability to get a promotion, but I don't think I could personally judge if this was really a company wide problem or an isolated incident or two.

Advice to Senior Management

I really don't have any advice, accounting wasn't for me and I moved on. I think the company does a pretty good job overall, but it's still just a place to work, your mileage will vary.