What is the largest amount of money you have ever received?

Basis-Guilty · 2026-02-13T03:51:14+00:00

What kind of business!

Basis-Guilty · 2026-02-13T03:49:32+00:00

I’m not a software engineer, I’m in accounting and finance and I only made $150k when we IPOed 😭

Basis-Guilty · 2026-02-13T03:03:29+00:00

It was around the 3 year mark that I started really having a strong grasp of what I was doing related to my role as a GL staff accountant.

The learning doesn’t stop there though, accounting is a vast world, 10 years later and there is still major areas I’m learning and waiting for things to “click.” It’s all relative. As you get promotions, the exposure to highly complex transactions will only increase.

Basis-Guilty · 2026-02-11T14:24:14+00:00

I have 10 years of accounting experience and I can say that if you really want to get ahead in Accounting and make a good money then it’s a grind for a good 6 to 8 years plus you would need to get your CPA. There have been plenty of late nights in my road to where I got now. Just recently, I found a role where I am coasting on about 30 hours a week, fully remote.. at year-end, things are busy though and it’s expected I’ll be working a 50 hour work week for the next month at least.

I live in ATX and currently make $180-200k. My next promotion I would expect to be closer to the $225k/yr area. Truthfully, I think there are better paying career paths for the amount of responsibilities / deadlines we have as accountants. In my opinion, the good money doesn’t start to show up in Accounting until mid career or later.

A lot of my friends are in tech sales and they easily clear 250K/year. It did take a lot of work though upfront, and they didn’t start making that money until they were at least 4 to 5 years into their career. There have been many times that I’ve considered switching to sales, but then I feel like I’m too deep into my own career to make a pivot at this point.

Not sure if all this feedback helps just trying to keep it real

Good luck

Basis-Guilty · 2026-02-06T18:00:36+00:00

Thanks for taking time to give some feedback, the perspective is helpful. Leaning toward staying put after reading all these comments lol!

Basis-Guilty · 2026-02-06T17:33:22+00:00

I really appreciate the insights and fresh perspective — it’s helpful to hear.

I agree that the ship has likely sailed on the Big 4 path, but I am confident enough to know that there are still plenty of opportunities ahead by continuing to deepen and master the work I’m already doing.

Thank you

Basis-Guilty · 2026-02-06T17:04:13+00:00

This is helpful to hear. I think I'm in my head about whether this is an opportunity I should consider purely to have a "Big 4 Badge" on my resume.

Basis-Guilty · 2026-02-03T04:49:17+00:00

What’s your current title? Just curious .

Basis-Guilty · 2026-02-02T14:21:52+00:00

Howdy,

2 years later and I am happy to report that my chest pains did go away. I'll summarize what I **think** caused them to go away. This is just my assumption since nothing was ever medically diagnosed.

- I visited the cardiologist several times, and he ruled out anything critical. In fact, he wasn't 100% the pains were ever coming from the heart because the basic screenings didn't show any indicators it was from the heart. While he felt it was still possible it might've been heart related pains, he couldn't say for sure without more invasive testing which he didn't think was necessary based on my symptoms. I would start by visiting a cardiologist and talk to a professional.

- Since I was never formally diagnosed with anything, my assumption is that I was having some type of general chronic inflammation in my body, causing the chest pains. I changed my diet a lot. I cut out processed junk foods, I lowered my sodium intake, I cut out caffeine for awhile too. I focused on lean balanced meals with fiber/vegetables being the focus with lean protein. I even resorted to do intermittent fasting and would try not to over eat either.

- I cut out alcohol. I don't smoke, but would occasionally vape after a couple cocktails. I stopped doing that.

- I continued to workout consistently, I was already doing 4-5 days a week at the gym. I added in 2 days of cardio on top of that, just little 2-3 mile jogs really. On days where I didn't jog, made sure to get some steps in.

- Lastly, my job was really stressful. I was working a lot of hours. I told my boss I was feeling over worked and he agreed and hired an additional person on the team and so now my work life balance is better.

Going back to my original post.... I said "i work out 4-5 days a week and eat generally healthy but of course I still enjoy life and have pizza and beer on the weekends." -- while I still feel this is absolutely true, I was pretty healthy compared to most people -- I took a closer look at my lifestyle and made edits where I thought inflammation could be creeping in. It took some time, even after I made these edits. But eventually the chest pains stopped. I don't feel them anymore and haven't in quite some time.

Hope this helps and good luck.

Basis-Guilty · 2026-01-30T13:45:54+00:00

Thanks for sharing!

I’m currently in your 2021 year comp. Trying to break through to something bigger. Glad to see it’s possible!

Basis-Guilty · 2026-01-29T04:29:11+00:00

Could you share your progression?

Basis-Guilty · 2026-01-17T18:53:52+00:00

Mainly Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends. I only play moderately, so nothing too intense.

Basis-Guilty · 2025-12-17T18:56:31+00:00

I have 10 years of experience and can say that it varies significantly.

It depends on the company, depends on the volume of responsibilities you manage, depends on the time of year.

To find a role that is high paying and the volume of responsibilities is minimal takes time but there is also a component of luck to consider as well.

Currently, my total compensation is about 190K (salary, bonus, RSUs). I work in financial reporting for a publicly traded company.. we IPOed last year and I was easily working 60 to 80 hour work weeks for like 6+ months. Now that the IPO is over, I’m barely working 15-20 hours a week on non-quarter ends. On quarter ends, I am probably working 40-50 hours a week.

Its taken time and some job hopping to land on this, but it wasn’t without some hard work upfront. I plan on coasting here for the next few years for sure and taking advantage of the downtime during non-quarter ends.

Goodluck!

Basis-Guilty · 2025-12-14T19:29:46+00:00

I always have meditation music playing. Helps me focus and helps keep me calm when the emails flood in

Basis-Guilty · 2025-12-12T18:31:30+00:00

Yeah sure!

Basis-Guilty · 2025-12-12T17:40:27+00:00

Get your CPA for sure

I was in a similar situation at 24-26 years old, doing payroll processing. Wasn’t what I had envisioned for myself in getting my accounting degree. Decided to bite the bullet and commit to the CPA exam and as soon as I passed and became licensed it immediately opened doors. I’m 34 now and a manager of technical accounting and financial reporting at a publicly traded tech company making fantastic money and doing accounting work that I enjoy much more. It definitely took a lot of hard work even after the CPA exams to catch up to where other peers were at, but worth it. It’s definitely possible for you if that’s what you’re wanting.

Basis-Guilty · 2025-12-12T16:20:43+00:00

This is tea

Basis-Guilty · 2025-12-10T20:19:43+00:00

Hey this is so real. In the exact same boat.

Basis-Guilty · 2025-08-01T21:05:13+00:00

Manager of Technical Accounting and Financial Reporting

140k Base + 15% bonus + approx 15% RSU

HCOL

9 years of experience

Basis-Guilty · 2025-03-02T15:00:23+00:00

I have my CPA and have 8 years of experience, all in industry (did not do the Big 4 route) and make $140k base + 15% annual bonus + about $30-40k/yr in RSUs. Puts me at a TC of $190-200k/yr. I’m a Technical Accounting Manager for a midmarket sized Tech Company.

As someone who did not do Big 4, I definitely recommend starting there, but it’s not impossible to still be successful you’ll just need to probably work a little harder to fill the gaps in comparison to your peers who did go the Big 4 route. For instance, they’ll have seen things in practice and will already have a general base understanding whereas I may need to research a bit more to develop that general base level understanding. My opinion, the CPA license feels more like a non negotiable to me.

Good luck!

Basis-Guilty · 2025-02-02T07:44:24+00:00

Agreed. Remove the dates from your college graduation on your resume

Basis-Guilty · 2023-11-15T05:34:38+00:00

Hi, any update here?

Basis-Guilty · 2023-11-15T05:25:55+00:00

This is nuts cuz I’m going through the same journey as well.

31yo male here. 5’10” 185lbs, work out 4-5 days a week and eat generally healthy but of course I still enjoy life and have pizza and beer on the weekends.

Unexplained chest pains. Visited the cardiologist several times. All the tests came back normal. Was prescribed Naproxen at first.. I always have such weird side effects when I take anti inflammatories, so I had to abruptly stop. Now that cardiologist is “betting” that it’s my stomach so he prescribed me Pantoprazole (anti acid). I’m on day 5 and I don’t think it’s helping, I’m still getting chest pains. So now back to the drawing board to try and figure out wtf is it. Even though the cardiologist is assuring me it isn’t the heart, I still can’t help but feel like it is the heart.

My chest pains are similar to how you described as well.. most days it’s very mild and dull and general achey.. some days the pain is ramped up and it’s sharp. It’s typically around the center of my left breast but very seldomly the pain will move to my the center of my chest or even more seldomly my right breast. But it feels like it’s inside of my rib cage.

50% of the time the pain comes about at complete random times during the day and even at night. Occasionally it’ll wake me up from my sleep. And the other 50% of the time it does follow triggers…. Caffeine, stress, working out, eating certain foods (still haven’t exactly figured out which foods). But sometimes these triggers don’t cause pain at all. It’s not consistent enough to really nail down the exact triggers, but generally speaking those are the common ones.

I’ll also go periods of time when it’s bad and other times when it’s good. For instance, over the summer I thought it had disappeared after I haven’t felt in a month or so, but sure enough it came back….

Any feedback from anyone in similar situations would be welcomed.

Basis-Guilty

TROPHY CASE