Better Local Firms Out There - Tax Associate Elliott Davis Employee Review

2.0
17 Aug 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There is a ridiculous amount of exposed brick in the office. Partners and senior managers will throw down hundreds of dollars on team building activities, buying drinks and meals for staff but when raise time comes you will be doing well to get four percent. Large training room littered with giant columns that block the view. Don't worry though, no real training takes place. All that happens is they stream someone from Greenville reading off a slideshow while the entire office plays on their phones. If you are an attractive female more time will be spent to groom you to go out and meet with clients.

Cons

All resources are diverted to making sure partners and senior managers are out trying to land new clients and not wasting time managing engagements, mentoring new staff, or actually looking at tax returns A spreadsheet of everyone's billable hours is emailed out every week to encourage over billing and hoarding work. If you are not an attractive female you are going to have to figure it out on your own. Workflow is a nightmare. Clients turn in documents the week of the deadline and staff and seniors are expected have the returns in review in enough time for it to sit on the partner's desk for three days before it is touched. Some groups work 40 hour weeks while others push 80 plus but god help you if you say anything about it. Client documents can be out of balance, unreadable, or printed on 3,000 pages from a dot matrix printer and you are expected to turn in a perfect return. Billable goals are in direct conflict with any work life balance. Unlimited PTO is useless when you have to work more billable hours than before. The only way to get promoted is to push all responsibilities onto other people and blame someone else if anything ever goes wrong. How one learns lairs is exhausting.

Explore other reviews about Elliott Davis

5.0
30 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good pay, remote ability, people

Cons

None to think of right now

1.0
4 Dec 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You get paid and maybe you can get in the door to a better team

Cons

The tax support role at Elliott Davis is not one I would recommend to anyone who actually cares about their job. Management for this team is a self-centered disaster. They micromanage constantly, always find something to criticize, and somehow still manage to make your workload heavier. The wildest part is that they try to micromanage specialized work they don’t understand, making an even bigger mess. You’re expected to “manage upwards” and hold the client-facing team accountable, but when you do exactly that, you’re the one who gets in trouble. Tax support managers repeatedly make exceptions for the client-facing team, leaving you looking like the bad guy for enforcing policies *they* created. And the whole “one firm” and “work-life balance” message? Completely false. There are some good individual teams, but it entirely depends on who runs them — and the TSA team is definitely **not** one of them. The support team is known internally for having the most toxic environment in the company, with none of the benefits that Elliott Davis claims to offer. To top it off, management once sent out an “anonymous” feedback questionnaire — except it wasn’t anonymous at all; just “confidential.” They tried to trick us, but we all knew what was going on and honestly didn’t care. And instead of taking accountability for the issues we pointed out, they twisted the feedback into something completely different just to avoid addressing the real problems. If you value fairness, support, or basic consistency and support from your leadership, look elsewhere.

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