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Listicle of the Day: Glassdoor’s 100 Best Places to Work In 2020

So far today, I’ve received at least three emails letting me know that Glassdoor just came out with its ranking of the 100 Best Places to Work in 2020. And for most of the day, I ignored them. But curiosity got the best of me, and I took a look at the list to see if any accounting firms were on it.

There were two—both in the large category (more than 1,000 employees): one Big 4 firm and one other top 10 firm. That’s it.

Given that the companies on the list are ranked based on a rating system of reviews by their employees on Glassdoor, what does that have to say about the vast majority of large public accounting firms? Either they didn’t tell their employees to leave a shit-ton of glowing reviews on Glassdoor or maybe they just aren’t great places to work. Based on the comments Going Concern used to receive and the comments you often see now on Fishbowl and r/accounting, it’s more the latter than the former.

But two firms apparently are great places to work; however, it takes a while to find them. Neither one was in the top 50.

Those two firms are:

52. Crowe
94. PwC

And if you really want to pick nits and include Accenture, they came in at No. 83.

Crowe, which was ranked the 50th best place to work in 2019, made 2020’s list because of its “fantastic culture, work/life balance, and an open-door policy with upper management.” It got a 4.3 rating out of 5, beating out such companies as Costco Wholesale, John Deere, T-Mobile, Intuit, and Apple.

But there are some outlier reviews, which are always fun to read:

Busy season was a year-round event. You will be expected to work over 70 hours a week. Blame is always pushed down to the lowest level. Seniors & managers constantly fail their staff because they are afraid to “step out of line” and speak up for them. The environment is toxic, to say the least. During my time at Crowe, nearly 30 people were turned over. Recognition is few and far between. Once your in the dog house, you will stay there until you eventually leave or fired. Staff can barely support the client workload and probably 50% of work is outsourced to different offices. Partners continue to sell knowing they can’t retain staff. Promotions in CREV will not happen unless you devote 100% of your time to client work. You will be tested on a daily basis and feel like your walking on eggshells.

PwC, which hadn’t made Glassdoor’s best places to work ranking since 2012, made this most recent list because of its diversity and inclusion efforts, personal and sick leave policies, and its culture, among other things. It also got a rating of 4.3 and beat out Chick-fil-A, Intel Corp., and four others.

But working for P. Dubs hasn’t been a great experience for this current employee:

I’ve been in bay area tech for many years and I’ve seen a lot of bad workplaces but perhaps none so awful as PwC.

PwC is a well operationalized leach syphoning funds from struggling tech companies and grinding it’s employees into collapse through malicious compliance and abusive management in a froth mouthed scramble for billable hours.

Lets go over the key points:

– Absurd work hours….working a 15,18 or even 24 hour day now and then is tolerable. Work hard play hard. Regularly working 48-72 hours without sleep or food because you have to be on calls none stop with someone somewhere in the world gets old fast. This isn’t even for a major release or software development sometimes you kill yourself just so partner can see a deck before their morning coffee! On weekends? Better be on call to service the whims of the partner. Holidays? Who knows. Oh but its ok there’s of “social” events that you will never actually have the bandwidth to attend.

-Abusive management – Theres a high quality expectation and that’s great but screaming and berating employees to tears over a missing comma in a 50 slide deck is absurd. Partner level management doesn’t have leadership skills or any way incentivize performance, it’s just a battle of who can yell the loudest.

-Antiquated systems and processes – Payroll can’t manage to pay you during your first month of employment. For semi monthly employees you may have to wait until your third pay period. Regardless of your finances going unpaid for a month is a joke and something I’ve never come across at companies small or large.

For those curious, the last time Deloitte made Glassdoor’s ranking was in 2019 (No. 80), EY in 2019 (No. 95), and KPMG in 2018 (No. 99).

Anyway, congrats to the two firms that made it in 2020. But take this ranking with a grain of salt: We think any best places to work list that doesn’t include Plante Moran is complete crap.