Skill-Set Vs Brand Name for Eventual Move to Corporate Finance?

Hi Everyone,

I am currently working at the Big 4 and am looking for new opportunities for a myriad of reasons. The long story short is I joined the firm over a year ago with a few objectives in mind, but these objectives were railroaded by COVID (not 100% the firm's fault, honestly) and so I'm considering other avenues to get me where I want to be in my career.

I'm in the final stages with a boutique consulting firm and am trying to decide between either sticking it out at my firm and waiting for an industry exit or leaving now for a boutique that does 100% of their work on projects I'm more interested in and would expand my skill-set, but doesn't have any brand cachet like my current firm. The boutique is also paying significantly more (anywhere from 50-60% in comp) and has comparable or better benefits to boot. Since you all know how poorly the Big 4 pay and how hard they work you, it's extremely tempting for the monetary component alone.

My end goal is to move to corporate finance in a junior executive role and eventually work my way up to CFO, ideally in a PE-backed MM company. My worry about staying in the Big 4 role too long is I'll get pigeon-holed into purely financial reporting roles and will be shut out from more finance-oriented or hybrid accounting/finance roles in industry. That said, while this position would give me much more experience with modeling cash flows, budgeting/forecasting, etc., on the flip-side, I'm concerned that maybe my resume won't be given as much weight or discounted because I'm not coming from PwC or something like that. 

So my questions to you, WSO, are simple:

• Given my goal, would you take the money + new skill-set and run from the Big 4?
• If I decide I want to move upstream in the consulting space the boutique operates in or exit to an FP&A role in a few years, would you rather hire somebody who went to a smaller firm but has actually done that exact work previously, or would you rather hire somebody from the Big 4 that has a "trainable" skill-set but doesn't necessarily have as much experience doing that exact task?

Thanks for your help!