A Bad Place to Grow in Your Public Accounting Career - Associate BDO Employee Review

1.0
Jan 4, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- New Office with great amenities and location - Employee benefits and compensation are competitive - Happy hours and firm events

Cons

- Extremely poor leadership in Minneapolis office, all the way from partners down to managers. - Zero work-life balance - Lots of office politics to contend with even as a first year associate. Staff above you will throw you under the bus at the nearest opportunity to make themselves look competent. - Associates are instructed to eat hours to boost the bottom line. - Open office concept great in theory but does not work well in practice. - Established internal processes for preparing returns are poorly implemented and generally not followed. - Pointless meetings that are ran very inefficiently and take up valuable work time. - Mentoring is almost non existent and usually turns out to be detrimental to your career if you do not offer the right feedback and praise local firm leadership.

Explore other reviews about BDO

5.0
Apr 16, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Learn good accounting concepts and people are nice.

Cons

Boring work unfortunately but it’s a job

2.0
Jun 5, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There actually are great people, but you play manager roulette.

Cons

BDO is notorious for promoting people who just never leave. The middle of the road, not great, not awful, people get promoted over and over again. There have been changes every 3 seconds since the ESOP. Terrible communication around change (non-existent). My manager's favorite term was "We are building the plane as we fly it". After 4 years, I was hoping to have more plane built. It was never built.

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