Pros
If you are looking for a large CPA firm and don't want to go to Big 4, you could do a lot worse than McGladrey. The benefits are decent, the office is aesthetically pleasing, and most of the employees are friendly and helpful. Additionally, the firm has tremendous resources available to all employees in order to help them do their job. The firm utilizes a lot of cutting edge technology such as state of the art computer systems, portable 2nd monitors, and iPads. There is a strong focus on encouraging on the job training and all employees are required to have a minimum number of hours each year. The work-life balance is significantly better than what you will get at a Big 4 firm. The work itself is stimulating, but can get repetitive at times. You will definitely learn a lot about how many different companies operate and really can't beat the training and experience that you are getting. You get to deal face to face with corporate controllers, CFOs, and Vice-Presidents. Senior management makes a very good effort in trying to make the company a better place to work. They are always working towards improvement of processes and actively solicit feedback from employees on these matters. They really seem to care about how the employees perceive the firm and ways to improve the overall experience.
Cons
Despite being the 5th largest CPA firm, it is not as well known as many other smaller firms. The firm is essentially a network firm in that they have achieved their growth through acquisition of smaller firms. The result is that the firm is a giant patchwork of different firms that function under the McGladrey umbrella so each office does business differently. The hours are long, but they could be made more bearable with some common sense, like a planned dinner break. It is unreasonable to eat lunch at noon and then work till 10pm and then go grab dinner. On one particular job, we ended up going out so late that we barely found a place to eat that wasn't closed for the night. The 'ivory tower' effect is very noticeable at this firm. As an employee here, you don't feel very appreciated. I could probably count on one hand the amount of times that a manager told anyone 'good job' or 'thank you for your hard work'. 'Please' and 'thank you' are not part of the corporate culture here. Managers receive their own hotel rooms while associates are required to share a room. Associates fetch food and coffee for the managers and team. They promised us an 'end of busy season party' that never happened, even though every other office and CPA firm does this. Quite often, I felt like I was pledging a fraternity, not working for a major public accounting firm. The management at McGladrey is the single most lacking thing at the company and some of the worst I have seen at any company I've worked for. This includes horribly unprofessional behavior such as not following established rules, excessive profanity, bad mouthing of other employees and offices, and open discussion of human resources issues with other employees, just to name a few. While I have seen this from all the McGladrey offices on some level, it is especially bad in Atlanta. Between a plethora of last minute scheduling changes and poor budgeting and planning, it was nearly impossible to plan your life. When there is work to be done and deadlines to be met, one of the hallmarks of a good manager is to pitch in and help out the team, not blame them for mistakes. At McGladrey, anything that goes wrong is automatically the associates' fault. It is no surprise that because of this the turnover is nearly 100% in the Atlanta office within a 2 year timeframe.