Ryan, LLC Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Ryan, LLC full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Senior leadership is fine. Company growth presents ample opportunity for career growth if you have someone to advocate for you. Atmosphere is friendly and generally helpful. Great place to enter from another company. Company is awesome to work for if you only stay 2-3 years. Workplace flexibility is unmatched.

Cons – Middle management is based entirely on revenue with no thought to leadership or management ability. Hence, if they bring clients with them when they come, are able to sell effectively, or get fed by a Principal, they will generally be considered successful even if they are extremely poor at actually managing. If you don't have an advocate (i.e. a manager or Principal who is interested in seeing you progress), nothing you do will make a difference. Managers / Principals are generally too busy pursuing sales leads to take an interest in your career, which obviously compounds the previous problem.

The poorer managers are also perfectly willing to accept mediocrity: poor performers are accepted, nurtured, and praised when they do well while star performers are expected to be stars and pick up the slack. This is a relatively new phenomenon (within the past 2 years) and is why I say the culture is eroding. When I started, mediocrity was not tolerated.

The firm does not care about education beyond the required accounting hours that they want you to have as a Consultant; an MBA is useless here due to the aforementioned reason.

Unless you come in as a manager or have an advocate you will never make manager (Team Leader) here. Having an advocate is the key to success here.

With a few notable exceptions, the Principal group is wholly consumed with itself.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep the good managers, fire the rest. You should know who they are, most of the employees probably do. If you want more sales, hire more BD's. Your managers should be there to manage. Your revenue would increase if engagements and employees were managed and motivated appropriately.

On that note, some of the things you seem to think motivate us actually don't. When you sign an engagement that in no way affects my team, I don't care. Principals and the relevant engagement teams benefit from those engagements, not me. I don't need the informative email. The amount of interest I have in that engagement and the amount of interest you have in my personal stock portfolio gaining 3% is roughly equal.

If you want to motivate your employees, find out what they want as individuals and then give it to them. I can tell you right now what would motivate each member of my team and about half the members of other teams in my office; I feel quite confident that their managers couldn't and don't care anyway.

Finally, you rest your laurels on myRyan and workplace flexibility. It's great, don't misunderstand; it's just not the only thing most employees are concerned with. You seem to have the attitude that since we have myRyan your job is complete and no one will even dream of leaving, which is clearly not the case. By all means keep it and be proud of it, but don't think it gets you off the hook for motivating your employees. Employee motivation is a job for the managers who have (or should have) one-on-one professional working relationships with their employees. Give your managers training on how to motivate their employees and measure them on their success. Rather than using their teambuilding budget for dinners and cirque shows, encourage them to use it on Myers-Briggs or Strengths Finder. Or better yet, let them do the cirque shows and you pay for their Strengths Finder.

Current Employee – been working at Ryan, LLC full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Flexible work schedule, thats about it...

Cons – 401k horrible, insurance expensive, ability for advancement lacking

Advice to Senior Management – Stop being so self indulgent and try to think about your employees

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Ryan, LLC full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – "My Ryan" allows workers to work from home which leads to employee retention. The CEO is a very smart man who built the company from the ground up.

Cons – The salaries are low and the medical benefits are pretty bad compared to the rest of corporate America. Ryan is micromanaged to the lowest level and there are numerous inefficient corporate processes that divert attention away from actual productivity.

Advice to Senior Management – Focus on bottom line results, not political agendas. You can't retain talent unless you promote producers.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Ryan, LLC full-time

Pros – Work-life flexibility is excellent. The staff (ie- not management) is filled with great personalities that mesh well together.

Cons – Management is constantly playing favorites - this ultimately determines which projects your work on and when you will be promoted (if you're lucky enough)

Advice to Senior Management – Start taking a closer look at your management, not just the revenue they bring in. There are managers who have ZERO interpersonal skills in the firm and this is contributing to employee attrition.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Ryan, LLC full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Decent pay, and weekends off. Very professional environment.

Cons – Long 12 to 16 hour workdays including Saturdays and Sundays. Base pay is 52k starting off which is good but when your working 60 to 80 hours a week it is not the best pay! Medical benefits are horrible. Bonuses are very low. There is a lot of favoritism! and LACK OF TRAINING!

Advice to Senior Management – Train your employees more and cut down on these ridiculous 13 hour workdays!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Ryan, LLC

Pros – myRyan, in theory, makes for a great work life balance - In practice the results can differ. I personally found myRyan to be great. It tries to measure employees against productivity goals and targets instead of 'face time' and hours worked. I absolutely believe this is a great idea that, with some refinement, will be Ryan's biggest selling point.
Results oriented organization
Potentential for good bonuses if they can measure your contribution correctly - My position was non-standard Ryan position that made it very hard to measure my contribution to projects. As such, my bonuses were initially non-existent. My principal (who is no longer there) managed to get some changes made and they were better, but still not comparable to what people 'below' me were getting
Impressive client list
Good plans for the future

Cons – Terrible hardware/IT/Laptops - Not entirely the IT staff's fault. Their IT was very cordial and as responsive as they could be with what they were given (not very much at all). They were stretched too thin. Most 'new' Ryan laptops were refurbs from Dell.
Difficult to request software/purchases that are necessary or for productivity - Dollars are pinched tightly here, sometimes within reason, sometimes to an infuriating extent. PO/Purchase requests can take weeks to get approved or looked at.
Some of the most mundane decisions (any purchase of any price, for instance) will work their way up to the CEO/Owner for final approval. This really slows things down.
With the exception of a few really great upper managers, the rank and file spend a lot of time rolling their eyes.
Thinking outside the box isn't recommended
Pay can be very competitive, depending on experience, hiring manager, and position.

Advice to Senior Management – You lose a lot of good people frequently to your competitors and elsewhere. myRyan is a great start at making your employees happier but the daily hoops that must be jumped through are a struggle. A lot of the rank and file do not have a lot of confidence in their leadership due to the amount of politics that are involved.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Ryan, LLC

Pros – Results only work environment is wonderful.

Cons – They fire easily. Throw good people away who do not reach their benchmark. Managers promote their favorites.

Advice to Senior Management – There's more to a good employee than just a benchmark.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Ryan, LLC

Pros – Brint Ryan has a great vision for Ryan.

Cons – You work way too many hours.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to employee concerns.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Ryan, LLC

Pros – Work life balance initiative allows you to work from home on a flexible schedule. Bonus compensation can be very good if you're assigned to the right projects. Young company with room to grow.

Cons – Work life balance is at the discretion of the managers. Some managers are not willing to give their employees this freedom. HR has not done a good job of ensuring managers are allowing employees to utilize flex-time. If you get stuck on a team with small revenue projects, you won't be compensated like some of your peers. The small revenue projects may take the same amount of time and effort, but you will not be compensated/recognized accordingly. Management does not respect staff level consultants. Principal group consists of a lot of new-money, and many lack tactfulness and class.

Advice to Senior Management – Get over yourselves. You're not God's gifts.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Ryan, LLC

Pros – Lots of client interaction, more tight-knit culture than big-4, focus is on state and local tax

Cons – Long hours expected, policies and procedures for every aspect of work can get overwhelming, you are closely monitored by "big brother"

Advice to Senior Management – n/a

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend