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Unless you’re being made a partner or a soon-to-be partner, or you have inside information where you know the firm is some sort of unusually fantastic place to work, I wouldn’t do this.
In my experience, local CPA firms tend to be poorly managed with poor clients, meaning tight budgets and lots of headaches. They also tend to have lower pay/benefits and lack of access to vital resources like staffing pools, technology tools, research databases, templates/guidelines, CPE/training, good office spaces, fun networking events, or generous T&E, PTO, and WFH policies. Not to mention that a lot of these firms are run by a single partner or handful of partners that treat the company like their own personal dictatorship.
The only real upside is the potential for better WLB but this is only true if you know the firm and its clients are well managed and adequately staffed which is far from guaranteed
I started my career at a 20 person firm, then went midsized and now I am in the big4. My small firm did very well and the partners made good money and had much better balance than I would expect at bigger firms. If they have a strong book of business, then life is good, so it all depends.
If there's high potential for you to make partner than it could be worth it. If not, it's not worth it.
I second basically everything above. Unless you know people at the firm well and know it’s a great place to work, I wouldn’t jump unless you’re being made a partner or are being put on a defined, short track to partner. You’re usually going to have little to no support around admin/HR/operations type stuff, so a lot of that is going to fall on your plate even if you’re a partner. There will also still be some non-PA exit ops, but there will be fewer/less interesting ones from a non-Big Four firm, so make sure you weigh that potential loss in your decision.
All that said, I know people who have done it, really enjoyed the ownership and entrepreneurship, and were happy to avoid a lot of Big Four bureaucracy and politics. After a couple of decades of grinding they cashed out and sold their firm to another and netted a nice nest egg out of it, so it can be a good, profitable venture if you’re comfortable with the trade offs.
Stay at the big firm and save your pennies until you reach Manager at least and get broad and as much experience you can and also get any licenses you need. Then rather than going and working for someone else to make them money build up your own local practice by setting up your website, advertising for clients, building relationships with local business networks and your existing contacts. You will be surprised just how many new clients you will garner in a short space of time especially around tax season. The first few years may be tough but well worth it. You can then start employing assistants and have them working for you.
Been there and done that and had an asset to sell later!
Interested in becoming a partner rite now? Many of you are currently at a firm with great clients who are probably being over charged and not treated very well. I can cold call them and offer them a proposal you and i can provide them better results and if we cant then lets charge a little less and get them in the door to build our book. Let me know if your interested we can hop on a call.