Pros
- The quality of clientele is top notch. They've been able to secure contracts with some of the largest companies in the US. - Employees are typically very capable. (They will be fired or nudged out if not.) So, there aren't often situations requiring high technical capabilities that need to be siloed to the same select few. - Pretty rigorous SAS training and application in comparison to most other accounting/finance jobs. - Workplace has the gimmicks/perks of a modern start-up company (if that's your thing). - Pay is middle of the road (low-end considering workload) to start but will scale nicely around promotions every few years if you choose to stay around.
Cons
- Workload can be on the higher end (50-60 hours most weeks and 70-80 hours during crunch). This is a bit variable, though, as different clients have different needs, and the processes surrounding clients are only known to 2-3 people at any time. So, if something goes wrong or a unique situation arises, you may be on the hook to resolve by yourself, which can mean a couple of 16+ hour consecutive work days. Calls from managers in the late hours of the night and on weekends are also not uncommon asking you to immediately jump online for 2-8 hours. - Turnover is very high which leads to a large portion of the company at any time still mostly inproficient as they have only been there for a year or so. - Each client has its own unique needs and collection of processes and code. Some of these processes and code are very inefficient and create a lot of extra hours of work, but because no one has the bandwidth to fix them, they remain inefficient. - The biggest con is a level of inconsistency between what is promised and what occurs. During the interview process, onboarding, and company meetings, there is a vision for employees that involves healthy work/life balances. During my interview process, I was told that a 40-45 hour week was average and tough weeks were closer to 60, which was off by about 10-15 hours across the board. If I had been told that ahead of time, I likely would have accepted a different offer. - Middle management's visibility and understanding of how much time a project will take is very poor. There is a tenet at the company that essentially states that people will get paid the same for the same amount of work, which is great in theory. However, in practice, it's quite different. Employees will have very disparite workloads, but there's not enough wherewithal to understand if someone is working longer because they are slow or because their load is too big. It creates a lot of issues in leveling out work and, candidly, you lose all confidence in upper management's ability to make relevant decisions about pay and promotion. - Skills are quite niche which limits mobility to more lateral movement than vertical movement if you wish to leave.