Related Posts
More Posts
How's it like at Anomaly?
How much was your bonus this year?
Additional Posts in Partner One
But what if you *are* Partner 1?

New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.



At BDO it’s a pretty wide range. New partners can be $300-500k. It’s all W-2 income, so that’s equivalent to bit higher K-1. They get some options in the ESOP that make that roughly equivalent to their old pension plan, but the pension plan wasn’t great. The bonuses haven’t been good the last few years, but base comp increased a bit.
As a partner or partner equivalent, you have to remember that you will get paid roughly what you make the firm, so basically your contribution margin. That’s all your book of business less your portion of all the costs. Big 4 are in the 15-25% range while smaller firms approach 30-40% as comp/revenue range.
Then your firm has overhead that isn’t included in the costs. If they’re not paying those amounts out, they’re either lying, not paying what you’re worth, or can’t do the accounting/budgeting correctly.
PwC has had this problem for years because they don’t book any variances in their standard costing approach. Basically the margin being presented to everyone is not the true margin, and everything is wrong in different directions.
Can I tag another question, what is Partner and one level below Partner (SM, AP) comp in consulting at BDO