tarheelfan4ever wrote: Inspired wrote: Those firms are good they are similar to the big 4 though...brutal to get in right now. They recruit the same way as the big 4, not too bright though a former partner went into my ex-firm.  How do you get into the damn Big 4? Seriously, no offense to anyone here who works there, but a lot of their hiring practices seem similar to how fraternities work, and frankly, some of the people who come back to give presentations about them from my school seem like COMPLETE idiots. I also noticed that aside from looking fratty, a lot of them also seem to be attractive, which leads me to think there's a lot of bias in their hiring practices. Are Grant/BDO like this as well? Frankly, if anyone else has noticed this too, I'm not sure if I even want to work for a firm like this. I want to get promotions based on how well I perform, and not be judged exclusively on soft factors (i.e. attractiveness, how much I drink (I literally had presenters talk about how they get to go out drinking often), etc.) and garbage like that. And by performance, I don't just mean getting the job done, but communication, and all that. I know that I won't be happy having to play office politics and worrying about crap I can't control the whole time, but from the looks of this thread, it seems like if I want to have a decent job opening my own practice or become a controller, then I have to go to the Big 4. FML lol.

I hate to say it but this is probably true at just about any large firm or large company that you work for. Office politics are the norm at these large place as everyone wants the corner office, the big salary and large bonus. Your best bet to avoid this is to work at a smaller locally owned company. You will probably not have the huge salary, but at least you will be happy and more satisfied with your work.

tarheelfan4ever a/k/a keeping up with the joneses, what happens if your salary tops out at $140,000?  Will you consider yourself a failure?