I will start by saying that Ryan is singularly the worst employment experience of my life. I will try to be as gentle as possible, but do know that the following only recounts *some* of my gripes.
The first frustration that comes to mind is that senior management is stubbornly cheap, and in ways that compromise productivity. I'll list a few examples:
(1)Ryan will not permit employees to have two computer monitors at their workstations. Given how frequently tax work requires working with two programs simultaneously (e.g. Word and Excel), a single monitor restriction makes a considerable amount of work annoyingly inefficient. Employees have complained vociferously, repeatedly, and with well articulated explanations for why two monitors are necessary, but Ryan senior management has always replied that the benefit is not worth the cost. Decent monitors purchased wholesale can be as cheap as $50 a pop. In a week, an employee could increase productivity sufficiently to cover $50. The benefit is not worth the cost? I strongly disagree.
(2) Irrespective of one's seniority, employees are not generally provided with subscriptions and login credentials for tax research platforms (BNA, Westlaw, LexisNexis, IBFD, etc.). Subscriptions are only made available after a request and business case have been made, and they are frequently denied. Oftentimes, after unsuccessfully relying on Google for tax research, employees resort to passing around the login credentials of the few individuals who were approved for subscriptions. Not only does this create a queue of individuals waiting for their turn with the login credentials, but it is also a gross violation of the terms and conditions of the underlying contracts with the companies that maintain these platforms. This exposes Ryan to the risk of serious penalties and/or contract termination should the abuse be detected. And to be clear, this is not clandestine behavior confined to underlings; rather, the chicanery is blithely carried on by consultants, managers, and principals alike. I frequently found myself at a total loss when attempting to conduct tax research without the necessary tools. Ryan needs to devote resources to eliminate this problem.
(3) Before shifting to an entirely virtual annual meeting this year, Ryan scheduled the meeting each year in Dallas during the fourth week of March. Hmmm, 4th week of March? What important date comes 2 weeks later? Yes, Ryan scheduled its annual meeting at the height of tax season, requiring all employees to devote two whole days of crucial time and energy to fly to Dallas and listen to the president, founder and CEO, Brint Ryan, talk about how great his company is. Now, why would he choose the end of March for an annual meeting? Obviously because it's the cheapest time of year for airfare and accommodations. The mantra - save a few bucks, even if it compromises our productivity, reliability, and professionalism.
Having personally invested a considerable amount of time, money, and energy in my education and career (I'm a lawyer with a tax LL.M.), I found the tight-fisted practices of Ryan wildly insulting. They prevented me from putting my tax acumen to good use, all in the name of saving a few dollars. This alone left me terribly dissatisfied and unfulfilled at work. Adding insult to injury, at the annual meetings in two consecutive years, Brint Ryan openly bragged on stage and in front of all of his employees about his $10 million house. Meanwhile, his employees were struggling to efficiently provide service to their clients because he wouldn't allow them basic industry norms like second monitors and subscriptions to tax research services and because he stole two crucial days of their time in the middle of tax season.
Another frustrating aspect of Ryan is its compensation structure. Ryan initially established itself in the tax services industry by focusing on transactional tax - primarily property, sales, and use. Not to insult or belittle anyone, but competent professionals in these areas of tax are a dime a dozen. They're not terribly complicated areas of taxation and they typically require little more than an undergraduate degree in accounting ... and oftentimes they don't even require that (I had colleagues with degrees in History and Communications). Although built on transactional tax, Ryan has strategically acquired a number of other businesses over the past 10 years to expand its service offerings. International tax is one of its more recently established practices. Every individual that I know in international tax consulting has, at a minimum, a JD/LLM or is a licensed CPA, most of whom have a Masters in Tax. Everyone I worked with had at least a Masters level graduate degree. International tax is a more complex area of tax (if not the most complex area) that understandably requires additional education and training. In the Big 4, this is reflected in the compensation paid to individuals in this practice area. They command a higher salary. Not so at Ryan. Compensation is determined at flat rates across all practice areas. I arrived at Ryan after it acquired my former company, a small firm with fewer positions in its hierarchy. Because I was an "associate" at the smaller firm, the lowest of 3 positions (I was right out of my LL.M. program), I was made the lowest level at Ryan, which put me on par with recent college graduates, even though I had four more years of education and 6 more years of experience from the years preceding my LL.M. year. Yes, I was paid the same as recent college graduates. To say this was insulting is an understatement. Also, I was promised at the buy-out that my compensation would not be negatively affected by the move. This also turned out not to be the case. Almost the entire year I spent at Ryan, I was staffed on contingency fee projects that had very, very little chance of generating much in the way of bonus. Additionally, the vast majority of employees that came over with the acquisition left within the first year, taking a huge portion of the previous business and projects on which I'd been previously staffed. Consequently, my compensation took a huge, huge hit.
Speaking of contingency fee projects, Ryan was the plaintiff in the recent DC circuit court decision that invalidated IRS Circular 230's prohibition on contingency fee arrangements (if you're interested the case is G.L. Ridgely, Jr. v. J.J. Lew, Dist. Ct D.C. Civil Action No. 1:12-cv-0565-CRC, 7/16/14). Following this ruling, Ryan began aggressively pitching contingency fee projects to potential clients in an effort to capture market share, even in practice areas where contingency fee arrangements make very little sense. I was staffed on such projects in the international practice for an entire year, and they produced absolutely no recovery for our clients and thus no fees for Ryan and no bonuses for me or others on the projects. In conjunction with the affects of the acquisition, this resulted in an annual gross income over $25,000 less than the income I was assured that I would earn when I took the job with the smaller firm, pre-acquisition. I'd only been with the smaller firm for 4 months at the time of acquisition (a whole other story and gripe I have no time for), but at the time I was well on my way toward reaching the income I'd been assured that I'd make. The acquisition completely upset the apple cart, and I literally struggled to pinch pennies to survive in NYC, even though I have 2 graduates degrees from top tier law schools. The rub - Ryan does not compensate its employees properly.
Because I'd been at the smaller firm less than a year at the time of acquisition, I decided to stay at Ryan for one full year to avoid leaving a pock mark on my resume. When I reached my 1-year mark, I began aggressively pursuing other jobs. However, my frustrations were so acute that I ultimately resigned before securing another position, and without being asked to resign. I simply could not take it any longer. I had been treated unfairly; I was not properly compensated; the tight-fisted policies of the company made work unnecessarily difficult; and by the end of my tenure, I struggled mightily to muster the requisite enthusiasm and desire necessary to give the work my best effort. Ryan constantly reiterates its enterprise level goal of competing with the Big 4, but before that can ever happen, the company needs to ask itself some tough questions about whether it is willing to take the necessary steps for that to happen. At best, I'm dubious of the proposition; at worst, I find it absurd.
