How is management perceived at Tanner?

Staff at Tanner do learn considerably more about tax and the accounting industry as a whole than their big 4 staff counterparts. Tanner has a unique team of specialized groups that make it a more complex and interesting Utah based firm to work for.

1. Hours expectations were unclear, unfair and unorganized. The firm failed to set realistic expectations each busy season, and then had to take corrective action in the weeks leading up to deadlines. Tone was reprimanding and upset, meanwhile staff were blindsided and confused due to lack of communication on projects and hours at the beginning of the season. Management expects staff to accurately sense and predict the amount of billable time each week during busy seasons, which is unreasonable. Tanner has a very busy, unorganized Spring, followed by the expectation to work 90% billable all throughout summer, and an even busier Fall due to excess workload and limited staff. 2. Hiring practices have severely diluted the firm culture and effectiveness in recent years. Negative Big 4 attitudes are spreading within the firm with the addition of many Big 4 managers and some Big 4 partners. Quick and quantifiable turnover at staff and manager level is causing breakdowns in teaching and understanding of firm processes, procedures, and best practices. Managerial unwillingness to understand, help with, or learn new firm processes or software functions creates a gap in effectiveness between staff and managers on projects. 3. Specific individuals both at Partner level and within the firm management are massively problematic, confrontational, and offensive in their actions and language. This unprofessional misuse of position and power can lead to an unsafe work environment. 4. Feedback systems at Tanner are broken. Data is poorly or incorrectly gathered and analyzed related to performance. Hasty, lazy, and incorrect conclusions are drawn without further study of data and points, or comparison to others in similar positions. Anonymous downward feedback systems serve as an unprofessional venting outlet that’s poorly timed, and prone to dishonesty and retaliation, and can lead to massive unjustified negative impact to an individual’s career. Upward feedback opportunities are limited and dangerous in nature due to a difficulty to remain anonymous in a position below those who have direct control over your position. Managers and partners are often unwilling to accept and respond to non-anonymous constructive criticism in productive, mature, and effective manner. 5. The compensation is below industry standard by a significant amount after initial salary offers. Intern and new staff offers are competitive, but Tanner is not competitive in year to year increases and promotional raises. Salary as an experienced staff was extremely similar to salary offers made to new staff starting in the current year. 6. Firm promotes prioritization of CPA certifications in word while recruiting, but the opposite in deed. It’s quite difficult to find time to study for and pass exams when working at Tanner. Long hours start early February, and end April 15th, but a 90% utilization (36 billable hours a week) firm goal during summer months, which often leads to more than 40 hours in office during non busy seasons, followed by a quick ramp up in hours again starting mid August until mid October make free time for study rare, and often at the sacrifice of sleep and other healthy habits. Firm meetings after Fall busy seasons even include language advising staff put CPA study in last place on their list after finding any and all other avenues for their time, clearly indicating the expectation that all studying is done outside of normal hours. While not studying at work may be normal, the expectation set by the recruiting team and firm going into Tanner as an employee was that summers would be slow, and off or non-productive hours would be best used studying, and there would be plenty of time to pass CPA without too much stress. 7. The system for coaching and mentoring at Tanner is nonexistent. The firm requires that staff schedule and build the itinerary themselves for coaching and mentoring meetings, which often leads to a lack of coaching and mentoring meetings altogether. If the staff does not take sole and primary responsibility for coaching and mentoring meetings, they will not happen, and there will be no support. The meetings are often aimless as well, as the coach/manager/partner mentors involved come without preparation and have no goals or plans for staff when entering the meeting, and no desire to help with the goals staff set themselves.

Some of the best people I have ever worked with. I genuinely enjoy getting to know all of my coworkers.

Poor communication from management, and unrealistic expectations for workload. Employees at every level are routinely burnt out. They are growing faster than they can hire for, so there always feels like a shortage of employees.

- Surrounded by highly intelligent people who will answer your questions - Provides wide range of technical experience - Systems and processes are fairly organized - Traveling for training once per year was fun - Internship experience is excellent

Busy season expectations are unclear and unreasonable (as some background, busy seasons range from February to mid April and August to mid October, which equates to a total of five months every year). It is hinted you should be around 60 billable hours per week, but you are also told the main priority is simply getting your work done. So if you work 60 hours, but don’t clear your bin, you get in trouble. If you work less than 60 hours, but get your bin cleared, more work is added to your bin, and you get in trouble for not working more. In my experience, I was never recognized for completing returns that were originally assigned to someone else, but was guilt tripped for times that other people helped with returns that were originally assigned to me. Also, in recent years, management has been firing the lowest performers at the end of every busy season. So even if you are doing a good job, it may not be perceived as good enough relative to the group. Salary absolutely does not sufficiently compensate for the amount of work you do. With all the overtime, micromanagement, and other annoyances of working here, I would have needed about 40% more to justify staying. And despite initial offers being at or slightly above market, annual raises are quite small. Unless you become a partner, you will be underpaid. Management is very stingy with bonuses. Despite boasting of record profits in every quarterly meeting, few people seem to actually get “busy season bonuses”. When these are received, they effectively equate to $3-5 ($1.5-3 after taxes) per hour of overtime you worked. “Open PTO” feels like a scam. One of the first things you are told after being hired is that "'Open PTO' does not translate to 'unlimited PTO'”. While there is supposedly not a limit on how much PTO you can use in a given year, it is explained in every firm wide meeting that people are using too much PTO and that we should stay below 20 days, or 160 hours (as a side note, you should expect to work between 300 - 400 hours of overtime throughout the year). I think the “Open PTO” policy is mainly used to seduce new recruits and to ensure management doesn’t have to pay out any unused vacation time when people quit. And people quit a lot here. Terrible feedback meetings. After every busy season, you meet with your coach, and sometimes a partner, to talk about your performance. In my experience, and in the experience of others I’ve talked to, these meetings focus almost entirely on negative criticisms. While this is done to foster improvement, it comes off as extremely brash and ungrateful. It is difficult to articulate just how disappointing it is to dedicate virtually all your time to a company for over two months without being recognized for the positive contributions you made during that time. Over emphasis on recruiting, very little effort in retention. Tanner is excellent at hiring top students because they say all the right things (largest CPA firm in Utah, work/life balance, resources of a larger firm but the feeling of a smaller firm, open PTO, etc.). Tanner has hired several dozen interns and new associates in the past few years. Only a very small portion of them will last longer than two years. Because of this wild turnover, people are constantly being hired from other CPA firms to fill in at the senior and manager level. This results in there being a relatively small number of people who actually know how to use the software, which makes them incapable of answering basic tax prep questions from interns and new associates. There is an attitude that every single client (yes, all 3,000 of them) is more important than you. There is virtually zero pushback on clients who are difficult to work with, take forever to respond to emails, or wait until the week of the deadline to turn in their information. Everyone complains about this, including management, but you are expected to deal with it. I would have loved to see just a single email to a client from a manager saying “Sorry, but we followed up with you on this multiple times three months ago, but got no response. It is October 13 and we are busy working on other returns now, and will not have time to complete this before the deadline in two days. We should be able to pick this back up in early November.” I saw nothing remotely like this during my entire tenure here. Instead, what you would get is a Teams message from the in-charge at 8:45pm saying, “Hey we finally got the new financials from X client. Do you have time to turn this around by tomorrow afternoon? I see you have seven other clients in your bin but it shouldn’t take too long.”

Staff at Tanner do learn considerably more about tax and the accounting industry as a whole than their big 4 staff counterparts. Tanner has a unique team of specialized groups that make it a more complex and interesting Utah based firm to work for.

1. Hours expectations were unclear, unfair and unorganized. The firm failed to set realistic expectations each busy season, and then had to take corrective action in the weeks leading up to deadlines. Tone was reprimanding and upset, meanwhile staff were blindsided and confused due to lack of communication on projects and hours at the beginning of the season. Management expects staff to accurately sense and predict the amount of billable time each week during busy seasons, which is unreasonable. Tanner has a very busy, unorganized Spring, followed by the expectation to work 90% billable all throughout summer, and an even busier Fall due to excess workload and limited staff. 2. Hiring practices have severely diluted the firm culture and effectiveness in recent years. Negative Big 4 attitudes are spreading within the firm with the addition of many Big 4 managers and some Big 4 partners. Quick and quantifiable turnover at staff and manager level is causing breakdowns in teaching and understanding of firm processes, procedures, and best practices. Managerial unwillingness to understand, help with, or learn new firm processes or software functions creates a gap in effectiveness between staff and managers on projects. 3. Specific individuals both at Partner level and within the firm management are massively problematic, confrontational, and offensive in their actions and language. This unprofessional misuse of position and power can lead to an unsafe work environment. 4. Feedback systems at Tanner are broken. Data is poorly or incorrectly gathered and analyzed related to performance. Hasty, lazy, and incorrect conclusions are drawn without further study of data and points, or comparison to others in similar positions. Anonymous downward feedback systems serve as an unprofessional venting outlet that’s poorly timed, and prone to dishonesty and retaliation, and can lead to massive unjustified negative impact to an individual’s career. Upward feedback opportunities are limited and dangerous in nature due to a difficulty to remain anonymous in a position below those who have direct control over your position. Managers and partners are often unwilling to accept and respond to non-anonymous constructive criticism in productive, mature, and effective manner. 5. The compensation is below industry standard by a significant amount after initial salary offers. Intern and new staff offers are competitive, but Tanner is not competitive in year to year increases and promotional raises. Salary as an experienced staff was extremely similar to salary offers made to new staff starting in the current year. 6. Firm promotes prioritization of CPA certifications in word while recruiting, but the opposite in deed. It’s quite difficult to find time to study for and pass exams when working at Tanner. Long hours start early February, and end April 15th, but a 90% utilization (36 billable hours a week) firm goal during summer months, which often leads to more than 40 hours in office during non busy seasons, followed by a quick ramp up in hours again starting mid August until mid October make free time for study rare, and often at the sacrifice of sleep and other healthy habits. Firm meetings after Fall busy seasons even include language advising staff put CPA study in last place on their list after finding any and all other avenues for their time, clearly indicating the expectation that all studying is done outside of normal hours. While not studying at work may be normal, the expectation set by the recruiting team and firm going into Tanner as an employee was that summers would be slow, and off or non-productive hours would be best used studying, and there would be plenty of time to pass CPA without too much stress. 7. The system for coaching and mentoring at Tanner is nonexistent. The firm requires that staff schedule and build the itinerary themselves for coaching and mentoring meetings, which often leads to a lack of coaching and mentoring meetings altogether. If the staff does not take sole and primary responsibility for coaching and mentoring meetings, they will not happen, and there will be no support. The meetings are often aimless as well, as the coach/manager/partner mentors involved come without preparation and have no goals or plans for staff when entering the meeting, and no desire to help with the goals staff set themselves.

- Surrounded by highly intelligent people who will answer your questions - Provides wide range of technical experience - Systems and processes are fairly organized - Traveling for training once per year was fun - Internship experience is excellent

Busy season expectations are unclear and unreasonable (as some background, busy seasons range from February to mid April and August to mid October, which equates to a total of five months every year). It is hinted you should be around 60 billable hours per week, but you are also told the main priority is simply getting your work done. So if you work 60 hours, but don’t clear your bin, you get in trouble. If you work less than 60 hours, but get your bin cleared, more work is added to your bin, and you get in trouble for not working more. In my experience, I was never recognized for completing returns that were originally assigned to someone else, but was guilt tripped for times that other people helped with returns that were originally assigned to me. Also, in recent years, management has been firing the lowest performers at the end of every busy season. So even if you are doing a good job, it may not be perceived as good enough relative to the group. Salary absolutely does not sufficiently compensate for the amount of work you do. With all the overtime, micromanagement, and other annoyances of working here, I would have needed about 40% more to justify staying. And despite initial offers being at or slightly above market, annual raises are quite small. Unless you become a partner, you will be underpaid. Management is very stingy with bonuses. Despite boasting of record profits in every quarterly meeting, few people seem to actually get “busy season bonuses”. When these are received, they effectively equate to $3-5 ($1.5-3 after taxes) per hour of overtime you worked. “Open PTO” feels like a scam. One of the first things you are told after being hired is that "'Open PTO' does not translate to 'unlimited PTO'”. While there is supposedly not a limit on how much PTO you can use in a given year, it is explained in every firm wide meeting that people are using too much PTO and that we should stay below 20 days, or 160 hours (as a side note, you should expect to work between 300 - 400 hours of overtime throughout the year). I think the “Open PTO” policy is mainly used to seduce new recruits and to ensure management doesn’t have to pay out any unused vacation time when people quit. And people quit a lot here. Terrible feedback meetings. After every busy season, you meet with your coach, and sometimes a partner, to talk about your performance. In my experience, and in the experience of others I’ve talked to, these meetings focus almost entirely on negative criticisms. While this is done to foster improvement, it comes off as extremely brash and ungrateful. It is difficult to articulate just how disappointing it is to dedicate virtually all your time to a company for over two months without being recognized for the positive contributions you made during that time. Over emphasis on recruiting, very little effort in retention. Tanner is excellent at hiring top students because they say all the right things (largest CPA firm in Utah, work/life balance, resources of a larger firm but the feeling of a smaller firm, open PTO, etc.). Tanner has hired several dozen interns and new associates in the past few years. Only a very small portion of them will last longer than two years. Because of this wild turnover, people are constantly being hired from other CPA firms to fill in at the senior and manager level. This results in there being a relatively small number of people who actually know how to use the software, which makes them incapable of answering basic tax prep questions from interns and new associates. There is an attitude that every single client (yes, all 3,000 of them) is more important than you. There is virtually zero pushback on clients who are difficult to work with, take forever to respond to emails, or wait until the week of the deadline to turn in their information. Everyone complains about this, including management, but you are expected to deal with it. I would have loved to see just a single email to a client from a manager saying “Sorry, but we followed up with you on this multiple times three months ago, but got no response. It is October 13 and we are busy working on other returns now, and will not have time to complete this before the deadline in two days. We should be able to pick this back up in early November.” I saw nothing remotely like this during my entire tenure here. Instead, what you would get is a Teams message from the in-charge at 8:45pm saying, “Hey we finally got the new financials from X client. Do you have time to turn this around by tomorrow afternoon? I see you have seven other clients in your bin but it shouldn’t take too long.”

Staff at Tanner do learn considerably more about tax and the accounting industry as a whole than their big 4 staff counterparts. Tanner has a unique team of specialized groups that make it a more complex and interesting Utah based firm to work for.

1. Hours expectations were unclear, unfair and unorganized. The firm failed to set realistic expectations each busy season, and then had to take corrective action in the weeks leading up to deadlines. Tone was reprimanding and upset, meanwhile staff were blindsided and confused due to lack of communication on projects and hours at the beginning of the season. Management expects staff to accurately sense and predict the amount of billable time each week during busy seasons, which is unreasonable. Tanner has a very busy, unorganized Spring, followed by the expectation to work 90% billable all throughout summer, and an even busier Fall due to excess workload and limited staff. 2. Hiring practices have severely diluted the firm culture and effectiveness in recent years. Negative Big 4 attitudes are spreading within the firm with the addition of many Big 4 managers and some Big 4 partners. Quick and quantifiable turnover at staff and manager level is causing breakdowns in teaching and understanding of firm processes, procedures, and best practices. Managerial unwillingness to understand, help with, or learn new firm processes or software functions creates a gap in effectiveness between staff and managers on projects. 3. Specific individuals both at Partner level and within the firm management are massively problematic, confrontational, and offensive in their actions and language. This unprofessional misuse of position and power can lead to an unsafe work environment. 4. Feedback systems at Tanner are broken. Data is poorly or incorrectly gathered and analyzed related to performance. Hasty, lazy, and incorrect conclusions are drawn without further study of data and points, or comparison to others in similar positions. Anonymous downward feedback systems serve as an unprofessional venting outlet that’s poorly timed, and prone to dishonesty and retaliation, and can lead to massive unjustified negative impact to an individual’s career. Upward feedback opportunities are limited and dangerous in nature due to a difficulty to remain anonymous in a position below those who have direct control over your position. Managers and partners are often unwilling to accept and respond to non-anonymous constructive criticism in productive, mature, and effective manner. 5. The compensation is below industry standard by a significant amount after initial salary offers. Intern and new staff offers are competitive, but Tanner is not competitive in year to year increases and promotional raises. Salary as an experienced staff was extremely similar to salary offers made to new staff starting in the current year. 6. Firm promotes prioritization of CPA certifications in word while recruiting, but the opposite in deed. It’s quite difficult to find time to study for and pass exams when working at Tanner. Long hours start early February, and end April 15th, but a 90% utilization (36 billable hours a week) firm goal during summer months, which often leads to more than 40 hours in office during non busy seasons, followed by a quick ramp up in hours again starting mid August until mid October make free time for study rare, and often at the sacrifice of sleep and other healthy habits. Firm meetings after Fall busy seasons even include language advising staff put CPA study in last place on their list after finding any and all other avenues for their time, clearly indicating the expectation that all studying is done outside of normal hours. While not studying at work may be normal, the expectation set by the recruiting team and firm going into Tanner as an employee was that summers would be slow, and off or non-productive hours would be best used studying, and there would be plenty of time to pass CPA without too much stress. 7. The system for coaching and mentoring at Tanner is nonexistent. The firm requires that staff schedule and build the itinerary themselves for coaching and mentoring meetings, which often leads to a lack of coaching and mentoring meetings altogether. If the staff does not take sole and primary responsibility for coaching and mentoring meetings, they will not happen, and there will be no support. The meetings are often aimless as well, as the coach/manager/partner mentors involved come without preparation and have no goals or plans for staff when entering the meeting, and no desire to help with the goals staff set themselves.

Staff at Tanner do learn considerably more about tax and the accounting industry as a whole than their big 4 staff counterparts. Tanner has a unique team of specialized groups that make it a more complex and interesting Utah based firm to work for.

1. Hours expectations were unclear, unfair and unorganized. The firm failed to set realistic expectations each busy season, and then had to take corrective action in the weeks leading up to deadlines. Tone was reprimanding and upset, meanwhile staff were blindsided and confused due to lack of communication on projects and hours at the beginning of the season. Management expects staff to accurately sense and predict the amount of billable time each week during busy seasons, which is unreasonable. Tanner has a very busy, unorganized Spring, followed by the expectation to work 90% billable all throughout summer, and an even busier Fall due to excess workload and limited staff. 2. Hiring practices have severely diluted the firm culture and effectiveness in recent years. Negative Big 4 attitudes are spreading within the firm with the addition of many Big 4 managers and some Big 4 partners. Quick and quantifiable turnover at staff and manager level is causing breakdowns in teaching and understanding of firm processes, procedures, and best practices. Managerial unwillingness to understand, help with, or learn new firm processes or software functions creates a gap in effectiveness between staff and managers on projects. 3. Specific individuals both at Partner level and within the firm management are massively problematic, confrontational, and offensive in their actions and language. This unprofessional misuse of position and power can lead to an unsafe work environment. 4. Feedback systems at Tanner are broken. Data is poorly or incorrectly gathered and analyzed related to performance. Hasty, lazy, and incorrect conclusions are drawn without further study of data and points, or comparison to others in similar positions. Anonymous downward feedback systems serve as an unprofessional venting outlet that’s poorly timed, and prone to dishonesty and retaliation, and can lead to massive unjustified negative impact to an individual’s career. Upward feedback opportunities are limited and dangerous in nature due to a difficulty to remain anonymous in a position below those who have direct control over your position. Managers and partners are often unwilling to accept and respond to non-anonymous constructive criticism in productive, mature, and effective manner. 5. The compensation is below industry standard by a significant amount after initial salary offers. Intern and new staff offers are competitive, but Tanner is not competitive in year to year increases and promotional raises. Salary as an experienced staff was extremely similar to salary offers made to new staff starting in the current year. 6. Firm promotes prioritization of CPA certifications in word while recruiting, but the opposite in deed. It’s quite difficult to find time to study for and pass exams when working at Tanner. Long hours start early February, and end April 15th, but a 90% utilization (36 billable hours a week) firm goal during summer months, which often leads to more than 40 hours in office during non busy seasons, followed by a quick ramp up in hours again starting mid August until mid October make free time for study rare, and often at the sacrifice of sleep and other healthy habits. Firm meetings after Fall busy seasons even include language advising staff put CPA study in last place on their list after finding any and all other avenues for their time, clearly indicating the expectation that all studying is done outside of normal hours. While not studying at work may be normal, the expectation set by the recruiting team and firm going into Tanner as an employee was that summers would be slow, and off or non-productive hours would be best used studying, and there would be plenty of time to pass CPA without too much stress. 7. The system for coaching and mentoring at Tanner is nonexistent. The firm requires that staff schedule and build the itinerary themselves for coaching and mentoring meetings, which often leads to a lack of coaching and mentoring meetings altogether. If the staff does not take sole and primary responsibility for coaching and mentoring meetings, they will not happen, and there will be no support. The meetings are often aimless as well, as the coach/manager/partner mentors involved come without preparation and have no goals or plans for staff when entering the meeting, and no desire to help with the goals staff set themselves.

- Surrounded by highly intelligent people who will answer your questions - Provides wide range of technical experience - Systems and processes are fairly organized - Traveling for training once per year was fun - Internship experience is excellent

Busy season expectations are unclear and unreasonable (as some background, busy seasons range from February to mid April and August to mid October, which equates to a total of five months every year). It is hinted you should be around 60 billable hours per week, but you are also told the main priority is simply getting your work done. So if you work 60 hours, but don’t clear your bin, you get in trouble. If you work less than 60 hours, but get your bin cleared, more work is added to your bin, and you get in trouble for not working more. In my experience, I was never recognized for completing returns that were originally assigned to someone else, but was guilt tripped for times that other people helped with returns that were originally assigned to me. Also, in recent years, management has been firing the lowest performers at the end of every busy season. So even if you are doing a good job, it may not be perceived as good enough relative to the group. Salary absolutely does not sufficiently compensate for the amount of work you do. With all the overtime, micromanagement, and other annoyances of working here, I would have needed about 40% more to justify staying. And despite initial offers being at or slightly above market, annual raises are quite small. Unless you become a partner, you will be underpaid. Management is very stingy with bonuses. Despite boasting of record profits in every quarterly meeting, few people seem to actually get “busy season bonuses”. When these are received, they effectively equate to $3-5 ($1.5-3 after taxes) per hour of overtime you worked. “Open PTO” feels like a scam. One of the first things you are told after being hired is that "'Open PTO' does not translate to 'unlimited PTO'”. While there is supposedly not a limit on how much PTO you can use in a given year, it is explained in every firm wide meeting that people are using too much PTO and that we should stay below 20 days, or 160 hours (as a side note, you should expect to work between 300 - 400 hours of overtime throughout the year). I think the “Open PTO” policy is mainly used to seduce new recruits and to ensure management doesn’t have to pay out any unused vacation time when people quit. And people quit a lot here. Terrible feedback meetings. After every busy season, you meet with your coach, and sometimes a partner, to talk about your performance. In my experience, and in the experience of others I’ve talked to, these meetings focus almost entirely on negative criticisms. While this is done to foster improvement, it comes off as extremely brash and ungrateful. It is difficult to articulate just how disappointing it is to dedicate virtually all your time to a company for over two months without being recognized for the positive contributions you made during that time. Over emphasis on recruiting, very little effort in retention. Tanner is excellent at hiring top students because they say all the right things (largest CPA firm in Utah, work/life balance, resources of a larger firm but the feeling of a smaller firm, open PTO, etc.). Tanner has hired several dozen interns and new associates in the past few years. Only a very small portion of them will last longer than two years. Because of this wild turnover, people are constantly being hired from other CPA firms to fill in at the senior and manager level. This results in there being a relatively small number of people who actually know how to use the software, which makes them incapable of answering basic tax prep questions from interns and new associates. There is an attitude that every single client (yes, all 3,000 of them) is more important than you. There is virtually zero pushback on clients who are difficult to work with, take forever to respond to emails, or wait until the week of the deadline to turn in their information. Everyone complains about this, including management, but you are expected to deal with it. I would have loved to see just a single email to a client from a manager saying “Sorry, but we followed up with you on this multiple times three months ago, but got no response. It is October 13 and we are busy working on other returns now, and will not have time to complete this before the deadline in two days. We should be able to pick this back up in early November.” I saw nothing remotely like this during my entire tenure here. Instead, what you would get is a Teams message from the in-charge at 8:45pm saying, “Hey we finally got the new financials from X client. Do you have time to turn this around by tomorrow afternoon? I see you have seven other clients in your bin but it shouldn’t take too long.”

- Surrounded by highly intelligent people who will answer your questions - Provides wide range of technical experience - Systems and processes are fairly organized - Traveling for training once per year was fun - Internship experience is excellent

Busy season expectations are unclear and unreasonable (as some background, busy seasons range from February to mid April and August to mid October, which equates to a total of five months every year). It is hinted you should be around 60 billable hours per week, but you are also told the main priority is simply getting your work done. So if you work 60 hours, but don’t clear your bin, you get in trouble. If you work less than 60 hours, but get your bin cleared, more work is added to your bin, and you get in trouble for not working more. In my experience, I was never recognized for completing returns that were originally assigned to someone else, but was guilt tripped for times that other people helped with returns that were originally assigned to me. Also, in recent years, management has been firing the lowest performers at the end of every busy season. So even if you are doing a good job, it may not be perceived as good enough relative to the group. Salary absolutely does not sufficiently compensate for the amount of work you do. With all the overtime, micromanagement, and other annoyances of working here, I would have needed about 40% more to justify staying. And despite initial offers being at or slightly above market, annual raises are quite small. Unless you become a partner, you will be underpaid. Management is very stingy with bonuses. Despite boasting of record profits in every quarterly meeting, few people seem to actually get “busy season bonuses”. When these are received, they effectively equate to $3-5 ($1.5-3 after taxes) per hour of overtime you worked. “Open PTO” feels like a scam. One of the first things you are told after being hired is that "'Open PTO' does not translate to 'unlimited PTO'”. While there is supposedly not a limit on how much PTO you can use in a given year, it is explained in every firm wide meeting that people are using too much PTO and that we should stay below 20 days, or 160 hours (as a side note, you should expect to work between 300 - 400 hours of overtime throughout the year). I think the “Open PTO” policy is mainly used to seduce new recruits and to ensure management doesn’t have to pay out any unused vacation time when people quit. And people quit a lot here. Terrible feedback meetings. After every busy season, you meet with your coach, and sometimes a partner, to talk about your performance. In my experience, and in the experience of others I’ve talked to, these meetings focus almost entirely on negative criticisms. While this is done to foster improvement, it comes off as extremely brash and ungrateful. It is difficult to articulate just how disappointing it is to dedicate virtually all your time to a company for over two months without being recognized for the positive contributions you made during that time. Over emphasis on recruiting, very little effort in retention. Tanner is excellent at hiring top students because they say all the right things (largest CPA firm in Utah, work/life balance, resources of a larger firm but the feeling of a smaller firm, open PTO, etc.). Tanner has hired several dozen interns and new associates in the past few years. Only a very small portion of them will last longer than two years. Because of this wild turnover, people are constantly being hired from other CPA firms to fill in at the senior and manager level. This results in there being a relatively small number of people who actually know how to use the software, which makes them incapable of answering basic tax prep questions from interns and new associates. There is an attitude that every single client (yes, all 3,000 of them) is more important than you. There is virtually zero pushback on clients who are difficult to work with, take forever to respond to emails, or wait until the week of the deadline to turn in their information. Everyone complains about this, including management, but you are expected to deal with it. I would have loved to see just a single email to a client from a manager saying “Sorry, but we followed up with you on this multiple times three months ago, but got no response. It is October 13 and we are busy working on other returns now, and will not have time to complete this before the deadline in two days. We should be able to pick this back up in early November.” I saw nothing remotely like this during my entire tenure here. Instead, what you would get is a Teams message from the in-charge at 8:45pm saying, “Hey we finally got the new financials from X client. Do you have time to turn this around by tomorrow afternoon? I see you have seven other clients in your bin but it shouldn’t take too long.”