I badly wanted to be a partner. There were a lot of things I was unsure about, but when it came to my career, I knew this much: I wanted to be a partner.

I remember talking with this guy about how important it was to me. We were standing at the bus station waiting to go to work. He was an architect in a firm downtown whom I had befriended since we took the same bus every day. He couldn’t understand why in the world I was so obsessed. “Well,” I said. “For one thing, partners have a free parking spot! You don’t need to take the bus!” 

It later turned out that the parking spot was not free but was included as income in the partners’ K-1 and was taxable. I must have been 28 or so at the time and had no idea of what a K-1 was.

I knew that partners were special. They made money. They had retreats and other special meetings where they made strategic decisions, the kind spoken about in my MBA program. We had lunch meetings where I ate an embarrassingly large amount of food. The Vietnamese sandwiches were my favorite. The food was good. The meetings I don’t remember.

Partners had offices. Partners could sign documents. I have no idea why, but I wanted to sign documents.

I talked a lot about being a partner with my closest friend at work, who also wanted to be a partner. We used to hang out with colleagues for happy hour after work. None of them wanted to be partners. My friend and I did not understand why.

Some of those friends left. We had to fire a couple of others. That’s a lesson we learned—partners have unlimited time off because they have no friends at work.

Eventually I went to “new partner training.” The firm called it leadership training, but everyone knew what it was. I don’t remember much from it other than that it had to do with some personality profiling tool. It categorized people in yacht terms as “sails” or “rudders” or “keels.” I can’t remember what each did. But partners probably have boats and they know what the keel does.

The other thing I remember from the training was that a lot of my future partners were bumming cigarettes from me. I still smoked. I was the only one to smoke openly, but after a couple of drinks I found more company than I could have imagined. It seemed I could make some friends with my new partners. I did quit smoking in the same year I made partner.

And I did make it—I got the call that I had been approved by the committee vote. Yay! I called my parents. I was 32. I don’t remember if I spoke to my wife. How can something be so important to me, yet I remember so little about it? Why do I not remember talking to her about it?

I went to my first partner meeting at the Fairmont Olympic in Seattle. It was luxurious and large. I was excited. Even more so because if you lived in Seattle and did not stay at the hotel you got an extra $500 in your paycheck. We had two mortgages and two kids, so $500 really moved the needle. They warned us that the $500 would be on my K-1.

Toward the end, they took the 30 or so new partners to a smaller room in the basement. The president of the firm stood in the middle and asked, “Do you feel that you know how this works? Do you have any questions?” We all nodded. “Oh yeah! We got it!” He smiled and left. We looked at each other:

“Do you know how this works?”

“No idea at all!”

My friend became a partner first, so she was my travel guide into the strange land. She told me she had “incorporated.” I was not sure what that meant, exactly, but I wanted to incorporate too. It sounded very sophisticated and the kind of thing a partner would do.

It turned out I had no salary anymore but a “draw.” I was not sure exactly what’s the difference, but the money did arrive in my account monthly. In fact, I had two draws—one monthly and one quarterly. It turned out I had to pay taxes quarterly, which was disappointing, but it seemed like a price worth paying.

My income seemed to go down, but it also kind of went up. It’s tough to explain. I got some money from the firm, but then also I paid the firm some money. I was “buying in.” I was eager to know how long I would be buying in, but I was told “it depends.”

I never knew exactly how many units I had or what percent those units represented. I had a “capital account,” which I visualized as sort of a wine locker. It appears that my capital account was as full as my wine locker—my appetite for food is matched by my interest in wines. There is not much left in the morning.

My tax return, once done on TurboTax, turned into a 50-page pile. I sat in some strategy meetings. One was about the color of the walls in the conference room. I signed a thing or two.

I quit the firm within the year of making partner.

It got way too complicated. I wanted to be successful and I wanted to be on top of my profession, and being a partner was a clear goal I could see and chase. Then I was a partner and entered another game I did not how to play.

When I first sat down to write this article, I intended to discuss how rising interest rates are making it so much tougher for young professionals (whom I call G2s) to purchase equity. I also wanted to talk about how higher private equity valuations are starting to make it very difficult for G2s to buy equity without significant sacrifices of income.

Then I was going to write about how being a partner is still desirable even if the financial dynamics are changing because it creates a long-term commitment between the firm and the professional. I wanted to provide some advice to those next-generation professionals who are wondering if they should be partners.

Then I started writing, and to be honest, I never know what’s gonna happen when I start writing. That’s why I like it.

I wondered, knowing what I know, if I stood on that bus stop again and talked to that architect what would I say? (I wonder if he ever became a partner.)

Later, I became an owner in a very new and young firm and I found a great partner, someone I still call my partner even though these days we don’t own anything together—he is just that good a friend. And then I partnered with one of the guys I used to be friends and go to happy hour with, and we are still partners. It is great to have partners.

It is great to be a partner too. You just have to find the right firm.

So when you ask yourself if you want to rise to those heights at the firm you work for, it should come down to a few questions you ask yourself:

• Is this a firm you believe in? Do you truly believe it will be successful?
• Can you imagine spending the rest of your career, or at least the next decade, being a partner in this firm, doing what you do surrounded by these partners?
• If you answered “no” to the previous questions, to me the answer is obvious. If you answered “yes,” then it will probably be a good decision for you and work out financially. Probably. If you want guarantees, however, you shouldn’t be a partner.

There was an old Volkswagen commercial that said: “On the road of life, there are passengers and there are drivers. … Drivers wanted!” That’s why I want to be a partner.

Philip Palaveev is the CEO of the Ensemble Practice LLC. He’s an industry consultant, author of the books G2: Building the Next Generation and The Ensemble Practice and the lead faculty member for the G2 Leadership Institute.