Leave Big 4 for Assistant Controller?

Just saw this, hopefully you didn't make the move yet. Here's my thoughts as an experienced senior at a Big 4 in Canada.

For a senior/ staff to leave for an assistant controller position, you're basically leaving for a small company (substantiated by your statement of $20M comp). I am willing to bet good money that the finance department is very small with perhaps a AP clerk and AR/ Billings clerk and yourself. Your responsibilities will likely revolve doing most of the account reconciliation, more 'complex' journal entries and be the main go to person outside of the controller position. The quality of the people that you work with will likely be sub-par compared to your Big 4 counterparts, i.e. 40 year-old mother with an associate degree from a community college and has held the same job for 20 years. You'll likely have no one in your circle of colleagues that's around your age or ambition.

As for career progression and as a continuation of the above, the controller and CFO have likely been around for a while and don't/ won't want to leave until they either 1. get fired, 2. die, 3. get promoted or 4. leave. You might be surprised as to how long you will be staying at that position if you take it.

The second point about career progression is true for anyone who leave professional services or in particular audit to join the finance department. For you move up within a company, you will likely bounce around and will very rarely just move up in 2 year increments. That's the benefit of audit in a Big 4, you move from SA 1, SA2, Senior 1, Senior 2 very quickly in 1 year increments and see newer things and broader issues very quickly. If you leave Senior in a Big 4, you will likely be brought in as an Senior Financial Analyst (SFA) at a bigger company (think F 1000) with more responsibility and scope while if you were to leave now, you'd likely be brought in as a Financial Analyst (FA) and not see progress for a couple of years, I have seen people stay at a FA position for 5 years, might just be them, but who knows.

An MBA in my opinion isn't out of the question, but you have to ask yourself, why you want to do it and what you bring to the table that other accountants don't have. The typical accountant has their CPA (or equivalent) with 3-4 years of Big 4 experience before doing their MBA, your assistant controller job is too ambiguous for me to spin any, but nothing is un-doable.

Here's what I recommend: Finish your CPA, make senior at big 4, it's a bigger milestone than what most people here like to say and is very respected by headhunters. You'll have more options and more time for yourself to think what you actually want. I just recently got my CPA, CA (I'm considered legacy, so in Canada, I can also attach CA next to my name as well) and got in corporate development straight from audit. I can't say I wanted this position from day 1, but having the qualifications is pretty useful.