Rothstein Kass Reviews

Pros

Good amount of vacation days, pretty good benefits, and paid over time. People are younger and are friendly for the most part.

Cons

The office environment could feel like highschool at times. There's no clear vision of your future at this firm. ok

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.

Pros

-Provides great benefit package with ample vacation time and days off
-Great learning experience and gateway to better opportunities at Hedge Funds or Private companies
-Paid overtime
-Firm events (LIFE Initiative, Holiday Party, Picnic)

Cons

-Completely unrealistic budgets
-Some people would be managing 10 jobs during seasom while others only had 3 and would leave at 9pm, while others would be there until past There is no confidentiality. You can take management a personal problem and you can guarantee the whole office knows the next day.

Advice to Senior Management

-Prove trustworthyness to workers
-Listen when your workers are speaking out (I think something is wrong when 90% of the senior class quit)
-Give FAIR evaluations with FAIR compensation. It isn't okay to give the entire company the exact same raise. It undermines the dedication some people do put in while the rest just breeze by.

I think this is a great company to start out at. You learn SO much - about hedgefunds, corporate life, and business, in general. This is a great environment to learn and strengthen your skills. After 4 years or so - get out. It's the best choice I made.

Pros

This firm basically lets you take off anytime you want nine months out of the year with a morning's notice. You can leave early any day during busy season so long as you think of some reasonable excuse. The only real expectation is that you get your work done at some point. After the economic downturn, the firm was able to hire more intelligent staff than they had in the past. So, it should be a better place to work now.

Cons

For some reason, this firm hired quite a few people who did not belong in the accounting profession. As you may notice, a lot of people on this board can barely write. This was typical at the staff level and remained at the senior and management levels. The "backstabbing" people were the ones trying to tell management to get rid of some of these idiots. Everyone received close to the same raise even though there was a clear difference in performance.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire some of these morons and give the good workers higher pay.

Pros

Additional PTO from working busy season hours
Diverse crowd of people to work with
Firm events (Picnic, Holiday party)
Extensive exposure into the hedge fund industry
Ability for seniors to manage clients and coach new staff

Cons

Unrealistic budgets and expectations
Lack of training opportunity for new staff (start in mid-November but only have little time to prepare for busy season which can overwhelm them)
Very long hours during busy season and even for jobs out of season
Management having the quick trigger of letting people go

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the employees of what they need to help them to achieve success in the firm. Most often when giving performance reviews it can hurt the staff's confidence and management really needs to help out the staff from a humanistic standpoint.

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.

Pros

The employees are very friendly and the company DOES try to keep employees happy.

Cons

to continue from my "pros" sentence, the company FAILS miserably in TRYING to keep us happy! so much politics. and the seniors and managers are HORRIBLE! they do not explain to you. the training sucks its all on the job training.

Advice to Senior Management

they need to learn to be patient and help the juniors instead of actually yell at them in front of everyone as if they are in some class room. no such thing as corporate environment!

Pros

Decent benefits and PTO
Many great co-workers
A diverse group of employees
Opportunity to learn, depending upon whom you work for

Cons

Increased pressure to "network" since business downturn
Quality of client experiences vary
Increased pressure to keep time "down" on complex jobs because clients want lower fees
Quality of training varies from poor to excellent, with little oversight

Advice to Senior Management

Don't "buy" business from clients and then expect jobs to come within an unrealistic budget
Don't make promises to clients without considering your staff's workload

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!

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.