Smithbucklin reviews

The culture was typical boomer style - brow beat everyone into conformity and no idea is good unless it came from the top down. Questions were discouraged and transparency was tacitly forbidden. Ethics were rare and if clients wanted to engage in quasi-legal or unethical behavior, management would never object.

My first two years were a good experience. Enjoyed the work and the people, even though most were younger than me (right out of school). My last year and a half I guess they figured I was not going to be a good fit and they wanted me to leave, which feels like the only explanation of what was going on. There are opportunities at the company for those that decide they want to give 200% in order to advance, but I have a life and want to live it so I refused to do that. I got penalized in my reviews for overbilling clients, but they would not assign me new clients or new work projects. Prior to that the work load was super crazy. My non-exempt job status should have allowed me to bring in additional overtime, but they create structures so that you can only charge so much time during travel. I never got a raise or promotion in my almost four years there. My manager was so swamped with his own clients, he had no time to really help us figure out good career paths at the company. They have created a culture where if anyone who worked under an association client had issue with a business unit employee, they never went to the employee to talk about the problem, they went straight to the Managers/senior managers and then the employee is blindsided by it at their review. It's difficult if you don't know how or want to play the game.