KPMG Reviews in Mountain View, CA

Pros

- good for resume
- PTO
- office activities

Cons

- communication
- fairness
- movements within practices are limited

Advice to Senior Management

be more transparent in decisions

Pros

Great place to get a functional MBA.

Cons

No work/life balance, be prepared to get thrown under the bus.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop lying to the staff.

Pros

Generous PTO, challenging environment, fast pace, rewarding, commitment to women and diversity, alternative work arrangements, strong leadership, great benefits, etc.

Cons

Work Life Balance hard to achieve, long hours, large organization which requires extra steps to get things done at times.

Advice to Senior Management

The firm is a great place to work. Hope to spend many more years growing within this company and seeing it continue to succeed.

Pros

A job at KPMG varies a lot depending on what team and what office you are in. Personally, I think KPMG's advisory practice is the best way to go. I actually work in a small group of advisory reviewing contract licensing to make sure companies pay fees according to their contracts. Such a role is so much better than the typical job functions in tax and audit. Tax and audit groups work very long hours and get paid less than advisory. Tax and audit roles offer little creativity, mostly they just do boring regulatory work and paperwork. Advisory still gets the same benefits as tax and audit like 25 days off a year. You also get 2 weeks off for having a baby, and there are overtime meals, per diems, hotel points, etc. In my role I don't have to travel much but it depends on what you do. Career growth at KPMG is great; you're almost guaranteed to move up the chain as long as you don't screw up, just do you time. The number one factor in moving up in the company is doing your time. If you are not amazing, that's ok, just do your time and you can become a manager. Once a manager, you don't have to work as much because you can charge less time to clients than the lower employees and so life just gets better.

Cons

For the most part, you are not paid or promoted based on skill or effort, so what is the incentive to work hard? If you are an all-star, you won't be rewarded. This means a lot of the partners and senior management at KPMG are people who just did their time and climbed the ladder. They often can't sell crap to clients, and they may not have a lot of project management skills, people skills, or technical skills. Don't get me wrong, they might have these skills, but there is no way to say for sure. Employees aren't put into roles that fit their skills and talents because everyone follows the same path. So the introverted guy might be sent to sell to our biggest clients. The cool outgoing guy might be doing paperwork all day or using excel all day instead of put in front of clients. Many of the managers and partners are lazy or incompetent. They pass off questions and work to those below them and pass the buck if something goes wrong. KPMG loves diversity and so you can occasionally be disadvantaged if you are a straight, white, male. Like anywhere, you will be more successful at KPMG if you can be popular and navigate a somewhat political organization.

Advice to Senior Management

Set a better example of hard work. Take responsibility for failures. Partners should manage their managers and make them take responsibility for their teams. Try to fit people to what they are good at. Try to reward people for more than just putting in time.

Pros

Most of the senior management at KPMG are friendly, supportive, and great people to work with and learn from. If you work hard, you'll gain influence within the firm and you'll get your pick of the engagements that come along. As each engagement means a new team and new responsibilities, there are endless learning opportunities that will help you to move your career forward quickly.

Cons

Some people move forward in the firm simply through the passage of time, and not through their inter-personal or technical abilities. There are some people in senior management who are arrogant, chauvinistic, and narrow minded. There's nothing more demotivating than working for someone who takes pleasure in publicly showing favoritism and belittling people in front of their peers, even if you're the one being favored.

Advice to Senior Management

Better leadership training needs to be provided to people throughout their careers, especially those who are lifers within the firm and haven't had the opportunity to develop certain skills elsewhere.

Pros

A good place to start your career. It offers a chance to see many different companies, in different industries. It's also good to have the brand name on your resume. You'll learn a lot about how to work with people through your job here. The vacation days are great: 25 days a year - that's hard to beat anywhere!

Cons

Sometime, office politic can be bothersome. The review process can be subjective as well. Also be aware that consulting schedule is unpredictable: long hours and high pressure on some days, normal and relax atmosphere on other days. The biggest downsides is that in certain group, staffs are not challenged enough.

Advice to Senior Management

Challenge your staffs more.

Pros

- Opportunity for learning (technical accounting)
- Opportunity to develop leadership skills
- Rotational opportunities
- Quality oriented environment
- Brand name- Big 4
- For the most part, meritocracy
- Colleagues are intelligent and motivated but not arrogant

Cons

- Strong personalities: This is probably the case in any accounting firm.
- Behind on technology: the firm is lagging the other big 4 in terms of adopting sound, up to date internal infrastructure and software.
- Management should be more frank and timely in communications to staff on key business issues

Advice to Senior Management

I encourage the KPMG senior management (Partners) team to better focus its client acquisition strategy.

I

Pros

Good training for college fresh graduates.

Cons

Busy seasons allow no personal time off.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve employee turnover rate

Pros

KPMG offers good benefits such as five weeks of personal time off (n.b. includes sick time). The medical, dental, and vision plans they offer are pretty good. They just reduced the minimum employer matching contribution for 401(k)s to 25% from 75%. The training and educational programs that KPMG offer are top notch and one will have smart and motivated coworkers.

Cons

Salaries for entry-level positions are allegedly (that's why one goes to glassdoor.com) a bit lower than they are at the other Big 4 Accounting firms.

KPMG promotes their "Work/Life Balance" policy relentlessly, but its heavily dependent on which practice and particularly, which office one works at. Don't give out your cell phone number unless you plan on working during weekends and vacation anyways.

Advice to Senior Management

More communication, less passive-aggressive micromanagement.

Pros

Limitless opportunities for Generation Y.

Cons

Long hours during peak seasons.

Advice to Senior Management

Not applicable to write anything here yet.