tarheelfan4ever wrote:   You asked what I want after I make 150k, and that's what I want. I think I mentioned it earlier, but after 150k, I no longer care about money. At that point, I just want to be the best and recognized as such at what I do regardless of whether there is a monetary reward or not. As for the first part of your response, I don't necessarily care for the big firms. I was just wondering if its still possible to attain my monetary goals even if I go to a smaller firm.

I think it is possible to attain that salary in a smaller firm, but you would probably have to make it to partner level. Back to your original comment about the office politics and merit based compensation, if you don't want to deal with that why even consider working at a CPA firm until you reach that $150k goal, you can make that kind of money and more in a mid-size private company, plus you will not have the risk of loss that being a partner brings, nor the capital investment required. I think the smaller private company's tend to appreciate their employees more than CPA firms.

Of course if you enjoy doing taxation, audits etc, then maybe the CPA firm career path is suited for you. Personally I thought I wanted to be an audit partner when I was going to school, but when I worked in the audit divison I found that I would rather be running a business, looking for ways to improve processes and being forward looking to auditing past events.