Ryan, LLC Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Ryan, LLC full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Ryan is a great place to start your career. They train you very well, and you will certainly know whatever practice area you're hired into very, very well. They also provide wonderful soft skill training classes as well. The work is interesting and ever-changing, which is nice. The benefits are nice and fairly comparable to others in the same sector. The flex environment provides the opportunity to really balance out your professional and personal life as long as you have a manager willing to allow you to take advantage of it.

Cons – While there, you will feel like you are preparing yourself for many more opportunities. This is untrue - you will find that unless you are in a specialty tax practice (severance, motor fuels, property, etc.), the daily activities and tasks you become very proficient at are not really especially desirable to anyone other than other consulting firms (unless you plan to be at Ryan for many years). There is no compliance work, no strategic planning, or any other of the many requirements that you will find when/if you start looking to move on from Ryan. Moving from one tax practice to another is difficult and practically unheard of - if you are hired into the Sales and Use Practice, do not expect to be able to easily move to Property Tax or Severance Tax. The bonus structure is biased and unfair. Unless you are on one of the "rockstar" teams (it usually ends up that the same 10-15 teams are making the most revenue each and every year), you will not be making the additional salary that Ryan likes to say that everyone in the firm is making. Also, Ryan has become very slow to promote to a management level (expect it to take 8-10 years). Additionally, the raise cycle is inconsistent and difficult (not the average annual pay increase that is fairly common at other firms). The flex work environment that Ryan has is difficult to navigate at best. As long as you have a manager that is willing to allow you to use it, it's great. However, it can be very frustrating when you are made to feel guilty/punished when taking time off. Not having a set amount of PTO days makes taking vacation near impossible. You will never truly be off, you will be expected to answer emails and phone calls while on vacation regardless. Also, working from home is not as common as they would make it to be - lots of the managers still feel that if you are not in the office, you are not actually working. Expect to be in the office on a consistent basis and expect to put in as many hours as anyone working at the Big Four (expect 50-60+ hours a week).

Advice to Senior Management – Find a better way to distribute projects to all teams within the firm. Provide additional training (internal or external) so that employees are able to expand their professional development. Allow employees the option to either remain with the current bonus structure or opt for a higher base salary with no (or very little) bonus allocation in order to balance out the inequities. Provide tuition reimbursement options to employees. Bring back having a set number of PTO days (or at least a set minimum that is enforceable) so that employees can actually "unplug" and not feel guilty/looked down upon for taking some personal time.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

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

Pros – Intelligent people, motivated staff, experts at tax consulting. Company has done nothing but grow for over 21 years.

Cons – Fast growing company experiencing growth pains. Lots of rules, policies and procedures - some are quite necessary, others are tedious and counterproductive.

Advice to Senior Management – Be more global in your thinking - there's a big world outside of Texas, and people outside of Texas are not always happy to be called on by aggressive Texans. Like the GEICO gekko, try to understand the cultures of people you do business with outside of Texas. And get rid of the "old timers" who have made their contribution, but who have "checked out" and are stifling the folks below them.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

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

Pros – Ryan is always looking to improve in all areas: for our clients, for our employees, and for our community.

Cons – Pay is far from competitive unless you are one of the few on really great projects.

Advice to Senior Management – Ryan is often very misrepresented to employees entering the firm. I've heard stories of consultants who are told they will make far more in bonuses in their first year than is realistic. Because of the time it takes to complete a project, the average billing amount and the amount of consultants sharing a bonus pool, it takes quite a few years to build up a steady income of bonuses.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Ryan, LLC

Pros – Decent starting salary with no experience, good hours, good work life balance, good people, Houston is a nice city, tax

Cons – Sometimes the work I was asked to perform was a little boring and redundant, growth potential seemed unclear many times

Current Employee – been working at Ryan, LLC

Pros – Ryan has an un-capped bonus structure which means you can be new to the company and double your pay or more in one year. Ryan implemented the Worklife Balance program, "myRyan" and works to improve it. The company is also quickly growing.

Cons – Ryans pay structure is significantly lower than its competitiors, this is partially due to the un-capped bonus structure. You can go years making low pay with relativly trivial bonuses. Also, if you actually start to slow down and think you can take some time off just expect your manager to sign a few more engagements.

Advice to Senior Management – You need to alter your bonus structure and/or pay your staff employees more. Stop anncouing at firm meetings how much revenue team generated. Although, go reconginition it makes others want to leave the company since it was dumb luck they got the project, most of the time.

Current Employee – been working at Ryan, LLC

Pros – Fast paced and challenging environment. Learn something new everyday.

Cons – Pay and set in concrete policies related to benchmarks.

Current Employee – been working at Ryan, LLC

Pros – myRyan creates a positive environment.

Cons – Administrative overhead can occasionally become oppressively high.

Advice to Senior Management – Quality assurance audits should be tailored more specifically to service line.

Current Employee – been working at Ryan, LLC

Pros – work flexibility is incredible! unlimited vacation.

Cons – bonus distribution is heavily weighted at the top

Former Employee – worked at Ryan, LLC

Pros – If you are lucky, and get a position on a team with a great client, you will be compensated in HUGE ways. It's not uncommon for consultants to get a 30-50k bonus. However, the majority of the time, you will get bonuses around the 1k mark. If you are fortunate and get average clients, you will likely be promoted quickly. Most managers will submit you for your first promotion after 2 years. Your second promotion is generally at their expense of a great employee, clients, and other employees on their team, so they are a little hesitant to let you move on, but it will happen if you push them enough.

Cons – While the myRyan culture sound great, beware that most of the managers have not moved past the old mindset. This means that you can work remotely, but you will likely be judged. You will need to make sure that you answer any and all emails within 5 minutes to prove that you are working. This is not the case with ALL managers, but it is the mindset in the Dallas office.

Additionally, the myRyan evaluation is now based primarily on revenue earned. This is basically your bonus. Again, if you get enough average clients, or even one large client, you are set. However, if you are unlucky, or have a manager who plays favorites, you can often end up on the short end of this number. The number is pretty high to meet and will determine your promotion potential, regardless of your knowledge. This is not a huge deal until your team mates get promoted over you, and you are still training them.

Advice to Senior Management – Senior management is doing a great job leading this company. If lower managers will focus on managing their employees in a way that boosts moral, then the projects will take care of themselves. Focus on your employees, and they will focus on your clients. Also, money is not the only motivator for employees.

Former Employee – worked at Ryan, LLC

Pros – I liked the place because of the specialized nature of the work - state & local tax consulting and audit defense, and little else (no tedious, boring compliance work or federal tax), however this is changing somewhat as I believe they plan on getting into federal tax and doing compliance work as well.
Company is good about sending you to state tax conferences, outside courses and uses webinars to learn state and local tax laws.
Bonus plan is really good, where you truly get compensated for the hard work you've done and motivates you to work hard on an engagement.
System of evaluation and feedback is less cumbersome than the Big 4.
Good place to go if you've already gotten good training at a Big 4 firm.

Cons – Line level consultants are good about sharing knowledge and helping each other out within their team, but getting support from other teams is difficult and teams don't seem to want to share anything with each other, almost are pitted against each other.
Many times you are just left to your own devices on how to figure something out and your manager doesn't have time to help you with it.
Extremely rigid policies about how to perform client work and other internal matters that don't always make sense and take away from productivity.

Advice to Senior Management – Spend less time pushing and training people on all these strict policies about how things are supposed to be done, and more time training people in state tax law, which is what the firm is supposed to be about.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend