Nothing wrong with not wanting to be ambitious but these old fogeys are taking up space and not really contributing much.

Big4 should have an up-or-out system like investment banks, consulting and law firms. Means if you're passed over for promotion within X number of years or times, you have to leave the firm.

This prevents a bunch of relatively expensive old birds from hanging around as hentak kaki SMs and draining resources.

Of course, there is room for the firm to keep around a few very experienced accounting technical experts, but ask yourself - really, are those laojiao SMs really "technical experts"? Most of them have simply gotten lazy and rusty by being too comfortable.