Pros
- Flexibility - remains pretty great, mostly project based. Some projects require on site work, others will allow you to work from home (or other location of your choice). Comings-and-goings are largely dictated by the senior member of the CFGI team (generally a Senior Manager) or the client. Overall, I have not personally encountered any issues, nor have I heard of any other employees in the NYC, encountering any issues in terms of flexibility. I have not encountered any pressure to bill overtime or work crazy hours. I would say that this is not unique to CFGI. - People - as an NYC office employee speaking about other NYC employees, the NY office is cool. Between 40-50 people in the office and it can be slightly cliquey, but everyone generally gets along well. I would say that this is unique to CFGI. - Quarterly Events - NYC office had a quarterly Town Hall at a very upscale restaurant during which they answered questions that were submitted anonymously. Their answers were frank and to the point and their honesty was greatly appreciated. For Q2, the event was a boat cruise around NYC, which is also very cool. Also unique to CFGI. - Use of Technology - the Firm continues to look for new ways to leverage technology to make lives easier, promote efficiency, and allow for flexibility. Not unique to CFGI. - Reception to Feedback - Given some of the administrative changes that have occurred in 2017 (introduction of corporate credit cards, recent switch to more frequent payroll/expense reimbursement), it appears that the Firm listens to some things although they generally seem to be the easier ones.
Cons
- Compensation structure - overtime bonus (which is your incentive compensation) is completely useless and not supportive of a high performance culture. You might have a very strong person that works efficiently and produces high quality work receive no annual bonus (because they did not work overtime), while a weaker individual may take longer to produce lower quality work and receive an annual bonus. Also, the highest I've ever heard of someone receiving never exceeded 25-30% so don't get your hopes up of anything more. Receiving your bonus here is a sign that work dominated your life, not that you are performing. Salaries are no different than any of our competitors. - Opportunity to Provide Feedback - the Firm does not offer enough opportunities for employees to provide ideas and feedback to management. A question was asked as to why more polls/surveys aren't used to gauge employee morale/thoughts and the answer was "we don't want to burden people with more administrative emails." Very weak answer; our employees are generally smart enough to appreciate the opportunity to help the Company so the Firm isn't doing anybody a favor by not asking for their input. Sounded more like a cop-out than anything else. This doesn't mean that the Firm has to implement anything but it would be wise to consider that fact that everybody has a different perspective or set of ideas, some of which may be worthwhile. - Lack of upward feedback and accountability - the Firm completely disregards a formal process to provide upward feedback and hold people accountable. If such a process does exist, it's existence is largely hidden from a majority of the Firm. There are certain people that are an absolute nightmare to work with and having an upward feedback process that would allow for this to be formally documented and remediated (hopefully) would be amazing. Further, decision makers do not take anything seriously and will do the bare minimum to enact change and they are not held accountable. Their sole focus is to grow the business (in terms of revenues and headcount) to meet the demands of the PE firm that owns a sizable portion of the company and the founders that are trying to monetize their hard work. - Information during recruiting - travel and type of work offered that is described to candidates is still inaccurate; if you work in the Boston office, you won't travel. If you work in the NYC office, Philadelphia office, Hartford office, you will likely have to travel and do so frequently - the degree to which you travel varies greatly (some employees have never traveled, others are 100% travel). Travel is NOT local either. Further, to call the work we do M&A and transaction work is very misleading - the Firm does very little true transaction work (very, very little due diligence, no strategy) but if you consider creating financial statements or doing other financial reporting for an acquisition or divestiture, or helping with purchase accounting, to be "transaction" work, then maybe yes, we do some transaction work. While the firm does provide accounting and finance advisory services, the scale is heavily weighted towards the accounting realm and this should be made clear to candidates (95% accounting, 5 % finance). Type of work varies on stage of business cycle and industries in which the Firm is working at any given time (i.e. biotech, technology, retail, consumer products, etc.). The Firm is very narrow in its service offerings and I would guess that a majority of our revenue is generated from SOX work, revenue recognition, or financial reporting/interim management. Overall, the recruiting at our Firm is disingenuous, very sale-sy, and people can sense this, which is probably a big contributor to so many candidates turn down offers. Lastly, our Firm is NOT a startup and in no way, shape, or form does it resemble any of the technology companies (in culture, compensation, or lifestyle) that the masses would associate with the term "startup." - Resource Planning - scheduling and resource planning is largely based on two things: 1) open projects; and 2) available employees. I imagine this will continue to haunt management as the Company grows - seems like it would make more sense to refine this process before the Company enters even more markets but we now have a San Francisco office and will probably have a DC office before the end of the year. - Benefits are terrible - just overall terrible. 401(k) matching is pathetic and a ploy to get people to hang around FOREVER. Deductibles for insurance are very high, as are monthly premiums. Number of PTO days is really low (15) and you have to stick around for a while to even get bumped up to 20 - once you do get the days, you are so limited in when you can take them that they're almost pointless (due to the new "grey-out periods" that dictate when you can and can't take vacation). - Lack of opportunity to specialize - Employees do not really have an opportunity to specialize (with the exception of a select few who are senior employees) and the opportunities to "take charge of your career" are not as abundant as an earlier review made them out to be. Perhaps some years down the road you can have some input, but there is a good chance you will wait three years before you get the shot to work on the project that you've been hoping for (and that will be the first time you've worked on one). There definitely is no hand-holding here but it is also not as simple as "taking charge of your career" to get what you want - there is far too much luck, timing, and politics involved. On the off-chance you work on a project early on that is aligned with your interests, there is a good chance it will be a long time before another comes along (unless it's something like Sarbanes Oxley or revenue recognition work, which there is alot of). - Nature of work - you can be a Senior Manager with 10 years of experience or a Consultant with 2 years of experience and there is an 80% chance that the Senior Manager gets work that the Consultant should be doing. We are hired for grunt work and we are chosen because we are cheaper for grunt work than the Big 4.