Rothstein Kass Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Rothstein Kass

Pros – Mid-sized...well diversified, fair compensation, many talented people

Cons – long hours busy season 75-80 hours, politics

Advice to Senior Management – Please do not fake people... do not fight, managers!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Rothstein Kass

Pros – - 7 weeks vacation (2 weeks accrued from over time)
- Open door policy
- Performance evaluation after large jobs
- Has philanthropy group

Cons – - Management doesn't depict a true picture of future business plans (when it affects the employees directly)
- Prefers people with similar personalities
- Management is disengaged with firm activities outside the office
- Some trainings don't match with job levels

Advice to Senior Management – -Please value the diversity each person provides. Providing feedback is great, but if the management is not willing to help the individual to overcome the weakness, there is only so much a lower level employee can do by his/herself. Think about where each person fits. Just because they may not have the ability to move onto the next level shouldn't mean that employee is incompetent. If you keep on moving everybody up every year, then everybody would be a manager by their 5th year.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Rothstein Kass

Pros – If nothing else, I would say the best reason to work there is you get paid overtime that can be used towards having up to 7 weeks off a year!

Cons – Like any job it is a complete toss up if you get along with the people you work for. It is better than most audit companies.

Advice to Senior Management – The management doesn't really care to much about the lower levels, there is no consistency in what they do there.

Current Employee – been working at Rothstein Kass

Pros – great pay, you can earn up to 7 weeks vacation or choose to be paid in cash for overtime worked,

Cons – lack of proper training, lack of acknowledgement of good work, lack of constructive feedback, lack of professional environment, lack of opportunities for career advancement

Advice to Senior Management – Improve performance evaluation process, improve brand name by improving the quality of work not by lowering price, improve consistency in work performed and management philosophy

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Rothstein Kass

Pros – 1 - Great place to learn the financial services/hedge fund industry.
2 - Great people to work with. RK is a very friendly and casual atmosphere.

Cons – 1 - It can be difficult to get progressive career experience. Senior managers/partners don't involve staff/seniors in any unique projects.
2 - Very long hours (although staff/seniors are paid straight OT).

Advice to Senior Management – Do something to show appreciation of the work your employees provide. I mean anything....a pizza day, a company happy hour.....anything. Just something. There is an entire firm of jaded and unmotivated individuals who are not going to have the desire to meet client expectations. People aren't going to believe that "next time" they will be appreciated for all their hard work, late nights, saturday and sunday workdays, and giving everything they have to the firm. These people won't be going above and beyond to please the client and their superiors because there is no self-interest in doing so anymore.

Current Employee – been working at Rothstein Kass full-time for more than a year

Pros – -One fair Partner who is very proactive and listens to the needs of his employees
-The job is simple and can be done efficiently with all the resources available when you work with managers whose interests support the firm interests as a whole.

Cons – -The system always freezes and IT blames it all on the server and there's just 'nothing' that can be done.
-Some members of management believes in only ONE way to audit
-Personal preferences affect the evaluation process
-Very detailed that Supervising Seniors miss the big picture of the audit because they focus too much on the neatness and uniformity of workpaper documentation

Advice to Senior Management – The world of auditing is diverse and it continuously evolves so efficiency is key to more competitive bidding and winning proposals. Your traditional ways are in no way contributing to your efforts of being efficient. Educate your managers and supervising seniors who are afraid come out of their comfort zones and accept other audit methodologies that encourage efficiency.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Rothstein Kass full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Pretty good benefits, and paid over time

Cons – Opportunity to learn, depending upon whom you work for

Extremely unappreciated employees and a huge turnaround

Very toxic work environment & culture where back-stabbing is encouraged & allowed. Alot of the seniors I worked with gave a ton of work and then went back their desk, sat back and chat with other seniors about the last episode of Lost. The staff I & II are very overworked and the few seniors that take pride in their job and take the time to explain to staff how to do things in an audit are usually the ones fired at end of busy season.

The SENIORS WHO ARE LAZY and stuff their staff with everything THEY should be doing so, can take 2 hours of breaks (excluding lunch) are the ones kept around. They are the ones who usually BACKSTAB those under them by blaming others for hours billed to a client when it's them who didn't work for the hours theycharged the client. And of course it's these types of seniors and managers that get to head up roundtable meetings cause they are such "real leaders" when it's them who talks behind people's backs but they give a big smile when they see the same person face to face.

Management can keep denying how miserable most of the company’s employees are and they keep promoting alot of the backstabbing seniors who head up the roundtables but when most of us decide to leave the company you will be stuck with those seniors who will be partners and you wll looking back and think "huh this is why all these people quit?" Just look at who the company kept and promoted to high levels for the answer.

Favoritism rules the day. If the managers/partners don't like you, don't expect to advance, even if you're talented. Don’t expect to win a rebattle with seniors who are liked by a partner.

There is NO CONFIDENTIALITY EVEN WITH HR! The minute you go into a meeting with HR or a partner the entire office will know your discussion in about 2 hours!! Absolutely horrible!! HR should get fined for not keeping conversations private!

Happy hours is not for everyon..., unless you know the right people, you're not getting invited.

Advice to Senior Management – Focus on really making the changes you say you're going to make, (ie make the company to run like Zappos) by making PARTNERS AND MANAGERS show the SAME RESPECT they want given, instead of YELLING AND CHEWING OUT STAFF.

Need to improve HR department and employee evaluation since good/hard-working people get thrown under the bus and lazy people who are friendly with the right partners are left alone and get promoted even though they are idiots.

Giving power to a handful of seniors can get out of hand since they hold alot of power and can take adntage of it. Please don't have 4 or 5 seniors determining who should stay or who should go and they are the eyes and ears of management. You don't get it that those 4-5 can conspire and get anyone fired who speaks up about their misstreatment by them! It makes other feel like it's Big Brother environment and you are being watched all the time. Stop that so that working at Rothstein Kass can feel warm and welcoming place to be.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Rothstein Kass full-time

Pros – Growing firm in accounting world.
Good opportunities to get experience in hedge fund industry, so you can find a good job after five years if you use RK to build your credentials.
Lots of fun events.

Cons – Favoritism rules the day. If the managers/partners don't like you, don't expect to advance, even if you're talented.
They preach about respecting everyone in the firm, but keep on partners who don't show any respect to their staff because the partners bring in lots of $$$.
One team motto.... when really it's more like forty five teams.
Happy hours for everyone... well almost everyone, unless you know the right people, you're not getting invited.
Pay sucks. Firm askes what you want, and then offeres less. Is that how you retain talent?

Advice to Senior Management – Focus on REALLY making the changes you say you're going to make, by making partners and managers show the same respect they want given, instead of yelling and chewing out staff.
Also, the focus is on making practice staff happy, what about the non-practice personnel? Seems they're forgotten as well, and don't enjoy the same benefits (PTO time off), events (a lot don't get invites to happy hour events, to name one instance), opportunities to grow (really, if you're not pratice staff, what do you work towards?).

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Rothstein Kass

Pros – Great interview process and presentations.

Cons – Constant calibration of firm for the sole benefit of Principals without any regards for associates' welfare.

Advice to Senior Management – Benchmark best practices at all times.

Former Employee – worked at Rothstein Kass

Pros – Reputable company in hedge fund industry. A lot of the seniors get to work for hedge funds as accountants after spending a few year in RK.
Plenty of vacation time. They encourage you to take extra time off for reduced pay (you can still get 20% of your salary after you finished your regular vacation). During off season there isn't much going on in the office, may as well keep you out of the office and pay you less.

Cons – Unrealistic expectations of how much time is needed for staff to complete work. Need to negotiate very hard to get hours to finish your work. If you eat hours, you get fired. If you don't eat hours, you never finish your work. And so most of the seniors and staff eat hours secretly.
A lot of back-stabbing going on in the company. There are certain seniors who are able to befriend the partners and so they can blame everything on the staff when things go wrong.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend