Overly Corporate, Poor Strategy, Poor Compensation Structure
Pros
Many of the people "doing the work" at Palm Tree (VP and below) are very sharp and hardworking. There is a lot of opportunity to master excel and be creative in the work you do. Unlimited PTO, PTO is fully respected by everyone Good balance of in-office vs remote (2-3days in office if in location with office) Great Learning experience Good training (can be improved but solid) Genuinely kind people Excellent culture Flat hierarchy in-office, easy to talk to anyone no matter their level Palm Tree is a great stop along your career journey, but a terrible destination.
Cons
Try to replicate banking titles but add intermediary steps (Analyst, Senior Analyst, Associate, Senior Associate, VP, Senior VP, etc). Leads to situations in which an analyst is sometimes stronger than a senior analyst or an associate is stronger than a senior associate etc. Similar to the above, salary is structured such that each level is +$25k (Starting with analyst at $75k, associate $125k, VP $175k, etc all public on their job postings)) In my experience there is 1.5-2 years at a given level before a promotion occurs. This means most people are making the same salary as the previous year even though they are now doing more work. This should be replaced with a salary band (IE Analyst salary is 80-110k, as you get more senior you get increases over time). Additionally, pay is the same across practices with the exception of IB being +$10k in each role vs Consulting even though the IB team is frequently working 80+ hour weeks (and closing minimal deals) Management caused in-fighting - the way that revenue sharing is split at the top is poor. If an engagement is brought in by Person A and their team does well and wins different additional work that is then managed by Person B, Person B gets the entirety of the workstream B's revenue, even though the relationship and engagement completely exists because of Person A. This creates in-fighting and situations where accounting teams are doing finance work and vice-versa. Management Strategy - new COO joined in 2023 and commutes from Charlotte to Los Angeles half the weeks of the year. Since joining his strategy and implementation has been poorly received throughout the firm. General consensus among junior workers was that the firm they joined and loved in 2020-mid 2023 was no longer the same firm they were working for. This led to a lot of junior turnover throughout 2024 and eventual layoffs of ~25% of the firm due to poor performance. Random attempts at cost savings to employee detriment?? Palm Tree hosts an offsite every year and decided that it would be a great idea for anyone that is an Associate or below to share a hotel room with another co-worker. The span of ages between Analysts-Associates can often range from 22-early 30s. This was poorly received by everyone in the firm and even if they made attempts to reconcile left an extremely sour taste. Additionally, the firm wanted to "match their accounting standards with best practices" and decided to randomly shift everyones pay period back one week in september. Untruthfulness from senior management - senior management has continued to iterate that the firm is in solid health, based on the above and additional look for random cost savings heavily implies the firm is in a much weaker financial position than employees are made to believe. Multiple Projects - employees are expected to work on multiple projects at the same time, the way staffing works is you are expected to be staffed ~50% on Project A and ~50% on Project B. This leads to situations where in reality you are working full time on both projects and need to constantly balance a variety of projects, calls, etc unnecessarily. Bonus - bonuses were generally advertised to be between a set range but completely subjective to firm performance. People at each level (Analyst, Associate, VP) are grouped into tiers. This grouping leads to favoritism since your tiering purely comes down to a poorly designed scorecard you submit months after you completed your project. There needs to be better steps along the way to receive feedback directly. Additionally, many people were very upset with the bonus they received in 2024. A top performer in 2024 (tier 1) earned the same as a Tier 3 performer in 2023. Many people in Tier 3 and Tier 4 received bonuses of 10% or less. Internship program is not reflective of any of the actual work done by the business. Internship program was also randomly made unpaid (after previously being told it was paid) Many pain points of the job could be easily resolved by having A. An admin or two to take care of expense reports B. Additional resources in marketing & development C. Clearer repository and Hub of pitch materials, templates, etc Palm Tree is a case of a lot of people at the top with great experience but results in too many cooks in the kitchen and too much thought and effort going into every decision that occurs.
