re: Looking for CPAs of the OT to educate me on something

Seems normal. My first job was with a large regional firm here in Birmingham. I think there were ~150 employees overall, and 100+ in our main office with others in smaller offices in nearby cities, but you took out admin and IT, there were about 125 that were accountants. About 25-30% of those were partners and most had been there 15-20 years or more.

We were a large diverse firm, and the Audit department was slightly larger than the tax department, and we had a much smaller wealth management/business consulting group. I want to say there were about 40 in Audit, and maybe a dozen or so partners when I worked there. Most of them had started there out of college, or started working there after a few years somewhere else, and worked their way up. The only partners I knew of that were more recent hires were ones that came from one of the Big 4 and brought some clients over with them. And even then it was a few years before they were made partner. Had to spend some time as a manager then Sr Manager first.

I also spent about a year working for a much smaller firm, and there were about 20 employees overall and 4-5 partners while I was there. We went through a merger and brought on the 5th partner and her staff in another city.