I would tend to agree with your assessment although all things said .. the Big 4 career path is not at all shabby considering the work life balance that can be achieved.
Lets see ... I will use Deloitte & Touche LLP USA - Audit and Enterprise Risk as an example
Post MBA - you land as a Mgr - comp 80-100K
Spend 2-3 yrs and move up to Sr. Mgr - 100-125K
Spend 4-6yr and move up to Principal/Director/Partner - 275-1Mil
Once you start becoming a senior partner and get responsibilities for geographies I can easily folks making upwards of 1.75-2mil.
So given that you 'can' achieve some balance it certainly isnt a shabby place to have a career.
terp06 wrote:
I believe it - they have all sorts of practices in Canada, Europe, and Asia and are allowed to undertake a lot more work. I was speaking only for the United States offices. I would be extremely surprised if I saw a strategy practice or strategy work being undertaken by KPMG, E&Y, PwC, or Deloitte & Touche (with the exception of Deloitte Consulting, which is a separate entity) here in the US.
In the 80s and 90s, these were still desirable places to work for MBAs because of the variety of consulting assignments that they would do. Today, if you ask any MBA at an M7 school whether they would like to go work for a Big 4 accounting firm in the US - they will simply laugh at you. If they are assigned anything resembling a "strategic" assignment, it will most likely take up 20% or less of their year, with the other 80%+ being spent on mind-numbing compliance work.