Vantaggi
BDO SF has some interesting client works for anyone that has passion of doing taxes. This is a great place for anyone who is fresh out of college. You can join the firm without any basic accounting knowledge. If you do not know how to complete a balance sheet, you can still survive at this office. Your senior and above will roll up their sleeves and wrap up the work for you. For first year staff, if you just want to do what you are told without thinking thoroughly, this is the place for you. If you are okay that you only get to do less than five returns for a year, this is the place for you.
Svantaggi
The scheduling is a mess. Your managers, sr. managers or partners do not communicate to each other when there is a priority issue. They do not give real feedback to staff on real time basis even though they tell you they will at interviews. You will be very surprised to hear a lot of comments after the career round table discussion. People falling behind do not receive proper guidance and feel sad to come to work. The office culture and environment are very bad - talking behind, yelling, and the worse - since it is an open space environment, your senior, manager will look at your screen and see what you are doing (even you are doing client works.) I will leave you to judge whether this is the professional environment where you want to be.