Aronson & Co Reviews

Pros

Beautiful office
Aronson moved to new office two years ago. New office has open setup and fabulous design. A lot of meeting rooms in new office.
Competent management
Jeff Capron replaced Lisa Cine to be new managing director.
Great peers
Dozen of young staff join company every year while some long time employee spend more than 20 years here
Flexible schedule
Partners are very reasonable

Cons

long hours; need to push manager for promotion; high turnover

Advice to Senior Management

keeping competent staff

Pros

good location, plenty of parking, not much good to say here, I work there for 3 years average 80 hours/week during the busy season and had enough. Turnover is continuous since employees are pretty much working there because they are scare of job market out there. Decent salary but not worth to give your life for.

Cons

Partner are aggressive in realizing unrealistic profitability meaning that you will be working 80 to 90 hours to fulfill their margin requirement. Work to take home is must during the busy season. Very open environment design so management will peek on your computer screen.

Advice to Senior Management

Should hire and retain more associates. Cant expect staff to perform 3 person job in one position. Pretty soon you will have nobody want to work for the firm

Pros

Can be flexible...for the right people
Good location embedded in a nice community
Modern office space - but loathe the "open concept"
Nice large lunch room

Cons

Micromanagers are all around you
Lack of strong leadership in some departments
Jail cell feeling of the "open concept" office design - prisoners vs. wardens feel
Minimal work load

Advice to Senior Management

Rethink how to retain strong employees and begin to develop or release the dead weight.

Pros

Good benefits. Some very good managers.

Cons

Tax season expectations. Some bad managers.

Advice to Senior Management

Take management skills into account when promoting employees.

Pros

nice people but very little communicatio to employees from owners

Cons

management does not want any input from employees

Advice to Senior Management

be more open

Pros

Co-workers, managers, and partners for the most part are very nice people who treat the employees with respect. Reasonable busy season hours and very flexible with employees who have special circumstances and need time off or who need flexible work schedules

Cons

Like in all accounting firms, employees are pressured for billable hours, sometimes corners are cut because of high billing rates. Employees sometimes feel pressure to "eat their time" because of billing pressures.

Advice to Senior Management

Employees and managers are kept in the dark about the direction of the firm or how the firm is doing .

Pros

Unlimited learning opportunities are available.

Cons

Expected to allow work to take over life, partners are generally preoccupied with $$.

Advice to Senior Management

Reinstate the little things that make people feel valued. Don't ignore it when direct reports are clearly burnt out. Recognize that pushing instead of leading by example is not a pattern for success.

Pros

It was a good place to intern at. I learned a lot and the people were all extremely helpful/friendly. Some good perks/benefits too.

Cons

-Benefits often weren't as good as larger firms (ie. CPA prep courses/exams not paid for).
-You are working for a smaller firm so lack of large scale clients/SEC work is not going to happen.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate well to your employees, improve benefits a bit to be more competitive, even if other competitors aren't offering them.

Pros

They are very flexible to keep good people so even if you have things going on in your life, they will really work with you to find a way to make it work for you. Lots of people work from home some of the time, work schedules different than 8-5, but still get 40 hours in, or work 30 hours a week except during tax season.

Cons

They do have required minimum hours during tax season, like all CPA firms, that really limit your ability to balance anything with work, especially a family or life.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a better look at how we approach tax season because it's just not a good long term plan for employee's to require them to work 60 hours a week for six weeks every single year. This is one of the major reasons why turnover is so high in our field. If we cross-trained audit people in tax more, then it could help provide some of the temporary help that we need to get to April 15th.

Honestly, the IRS just needs to revamp the due dates for the various returns so there isn't the need for the cram session in April.