- If placed on a team with a "grinding" VP, be prepared to hate your life. You'll literally get called on holidays and asked to come into the office. An analyst in my office was called into work on Mother's Day while he was out with his family, and he was an hour and a half away from the office. Also, if you plan on moving up to the VP level, you're expected to come in before your superiors and leave after your superiors (which is understandable, especially in a "face-time" focused industry like finance). You're also expected to say "yes" to anything asked of you, including the anecdote mentioned above. Office politics is heavy; there's a lot of brown-nosing and kissing up. However, office politics is probably true of any work environment, especially finance; so everyone on Glassdoor complaining about how the politics suck at Ayco should stop complaining and grow up. Social politics is a part of life.
- For a wealth management firm, Ayco places an unreasonable amount of time into the tax planning and tax return preparation of clients. If you're in the Financial Counseling division, I'd say that 75% of the work you do is tax related. The job is not as investment heavy as it is played out to be. As an analyst right out of undergrad (no CPA or any prior tax experience), you'll be preparing ultra complex tax returns for clients that involve multi-state sourcing of stock options and restricted stock grants, foreign income and foreign tax credits, etc. In addition, a good number of associates in the "tax department" do not even have a CPA, nor do the VPs. Pretty much, you'll be doing CPA level work for cheap. I don't understand why Ayco places so much emphasis on taxes; I don't believe it adds much value to the bottom line of the firm. If the wealth management divisions of Bulge Bracket Banks (Goldman Sachs [the REAL one], UBS, Morgan Stanley) are thriving with major AUM, have healthy profit margins, and aren't focusing on preparing tax returns, I do not buy the argument that Ayco makes that doing taxes "keeps us closer to our clients." Instead of spending so much time and emphasis on taxes, Ayco can spend more time on bringing in new business and AUM. I'm open to other arguments.
- The pay is extremely low for the amount of work you're expected to do. You'll pretty much work Wall Street hours for 1/5th of the Wall Street analyst pay, and you won't have the exit opportunities that they have.
- Morale is extremely low. Every analyst who isn't trying to make VP (I'd say about 80% aren't trying to make VP) is pretty much fed up after 1 year and start looking for a new job. However, it's frustrating because wealth management skills don't really transfer to any other industry besides wealth management. I'd say the low morale is a result of the low pay, corporate culture, and lack of employee perks compared to other companies (I hear of a lot of places that serve free lunch everyday and give every other Friday off).
- SORRY FOR ANY GRAMMATICAL/SPELLING ERRORS. I KNOW ANYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH WHAT I HAVE SAID WILL PROBABLY TRY TO USE MY GRAMMAR AS AN AD HOMINEM. NOT HERE TO WRITE AN ACADEMIC ESSAY, JUST GET MY POINTS ACROSS.
