BDO reviews

3.5

62% would recommend to a friend

(10,316 total reviews)

Pat Kramer and Peter van Laer

73% approve of CEO

57% positive business outlook

BDO has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 10,316 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The BDO employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Finanzen industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

10K reviews
2.0
Sep 24, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

As good points: the company provides adequate staff training and organised social events.

Cons

The promotions and staff evaluation are not fairly based on performance but on getting close and personal with the partners. Women, in particular, do not get equal opportunities for carrier development and thus equal pay. BDO used to give opportunity for a good work life balance but since the new management took over this is not the case anymore. It is increasingly stressful with a focus on financial targets and compromising the quality of work to meet budgets. Generally people lack basic communication skills and it is very hard to be a new starter as nobody would be bothered to make you feel welcome or even talk to you. There is a culture among some managers to ignore totally people below their level unless working on their project. All this makes the atmosphere in the office very tense. Although the pay might be similar to the competitors, bonuses are something unheard of. The staff appraisals are focused on the negatives and development points. They are designed in such a way as to make you feel not good at your job. This is also the attitude in communication between senior and more junior members of staff; on many occasions instead of thank you people are told that they are not good enough and are inefficient. Overall there must be better places to work.

3.0
Sep 14, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

At the local level it's small, easy to fit in. The software systems, except for a few, are easy to use and help complete the job. Mid-tier is challenging and there's an awful lot to learn. If you put your head down and work you'll probably do pretty well.

Cons

Despite the fact that the firm has been around for 80+ years, the name is not well-recognized by either potential clients or potential employees making networking and recruiting difficult. There's an "every man for himself" type of culture throughout, senior to senior, manager to manager, partner to partner, but especially across business lines. So much so, that I've even heard one partner in one business line refer to others in another business line as "competition". Most business lines don't even know the names of the other employees across business lines and have no clue about what they do. Probably typical of all mid-tier firms, there's an overall sense that the firm just follows the lead of the Big 4.

3.0
Aug 26, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Lucrative incentive plan. Great co-workers. A good work environment. People have fun and hang out away from the office. They tend to listen to employees and take their suggestions seriously. Whether they act on them or not is, of course, another story.

Cons

One of the biggest problems I've found at SWC is that employees don't get much recognition for a job well done. Sure the monthly (usually) employee of the month is handed out, but when someone continues to exceed expectations, they rarely will be rewarded. If you always are that good - then that's just what you do... not some outstanding achievement. Management has been known to say things like "don't let him know how good he is..." Perhaps in a joking fashion, but most jokes like that are typically rooted in truth.

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