PE work/life balance practical considerations

At a MM fund (half the size of yours). I'm at a sweatshop so maybe your fund won't be like this.

1. No, usually 5-10 hours at minimum. Protected weekends don't exist

2. Yes, but if you're deep in a live deal, probably not

3. Sometimes but you will have to give something up (i.e. sleep)

4. Yes but usually working during vacation. If a deal dies and you take vacation right after, you're probably safe

5. It's ok but I think the first year associates who just started at my fund aren't faring as well

I’m at a similar size fund and have seen a huge bifurcation between live deals (last few parties or exclusive and sprinting) and the other times. In the former case, it’s worse than banking / 7 days a week. But I’ve had it pretty good outside of that (probably 60-70 hours a week or so with 6 hours of weekend work on average)

Just popping in to say, this thread is bleak. Some of you need to reconsider what is important in life....

Seeing lots of these threads so I’m going to just keep repeating what I wish others had told me (instead of lying to me about what it’s really like): the things you’ve listed all don’t happen in PE. You are constantly engaged in something (whether it’s new platform opportunities or something with your existing portcos), there’s never a down period, and you’re the only person with ownership of key work streams that others won’t (and often can’t) pick up. You’ll never be able to take a vacation. The best weekends are those where I’m just spending 10 hours catching up on my backlog of less critical admin garbage, instead of throwing together yet another deck for a Monday meeting. If you are concerned about these things you’re not going to make it to the senior enough positions for PE to be worth entering. 

Associate Consultant in Consulting

A 1am night is considered relatively late to me.

On a more serious note, this thread is so dark but also entirely accurate. Seriously don’t understand the senior people who drive this / care about nothing else in life but work. Props to them though, they’re well paid for a reason I suppose.

PE is far worse than consulting and worse than the “new”’banking (although the new banking is mostly restricted to junior people I.e. VPs still get fucked).

How much control do you have over your hours on the weekend? Let's say you have to work 20 hours over the weekend. Is it feasible to work 10am-7pm on saturday and then 10am-9pm on Sunday? Or do you find you have to work very late on Saturdays (up to 10-11pm etc.)?

Bump

These responses make me feel so grateful for my current seat. 60 hours a week on average. Incredible exposure to partners, portco management, and technicals via moderately strong deal flow. MM industry-focused seat here. 

TL;DR not all seats are horror stories... if I would have read these responses back when I was in banking I would've never made the move. What a horrible mistake that would have been. 

$10bn+ fund; first year was tough, but once you know your stuff it improves materially

1. I don‘t work that much on weekends apart from a regular 2-3h on Sundays to catch-up on stuff or prepare the week; if there‘s a live deal that is really hot I will spend most of the weekend working on it, but that doesn‘t happen very often to be fair

2. I usually get 7-8h per night; again exception is when things go crazy then you are looking at banking hours; I always have time to work out though and couldn‘t do the job without it; when it‘s super busy I only manage to do SAT / SUN, otherwise I try to squeeze in 2 additional workouts during the week

3. Yes - have gf, friends (also non-finance), see family, etc.

4. Vacations are a bit difficult, except Summer (Jul / Aug) when things are slower (this is Europe, can‘t speak for the US); if you have a portfolio company and there‘s a problem, you have to take care of it as it is only you that can do it; usually I have a couple of calls when I am on vacation but I really only take the ones that are strictly necessary (you get a sense for that as you spend some time in PE)

5. No issues in general, but Corona is starting to get to me as I just spend so much time at home. I like the job most of the the time so can‘t complain; also, those horror stories that get thrown around on this forum seem to be mostly from the US but there are obviously just funds with toxic cultures

Shit, this thread is making me consider focusing my recruitment on consulting instead of IB. 

I think data points above are skewed towards the "bleaker" side, here to offer another alternative.

Background: 2nd year MF (>$50b PE AUM) analyst, but work directly with VPs / Principals (i.e. no associates on deal teams). Worked on 5 and closed 3 transactions last year. 

Your 5 questions need to be answered in context of (i) during live deals (~50% on average, was ~85% of the time in 2020 due to COVID), (ii) early-stage deals 

1. Do you get weekends to yourself:

-During live deals: no, you're not expected to be in office but people will send you IMs and expect quick replies. I manage this by making sure I'm online in IM while at the gym, going out to eat with friends, drinks, etc. and not just sit at my desk waiting for comments. Laptops with me though in case I need to open up models / decks

-Off live deals: yes, I'm only on phone

2. During the week, is it possible to get 7+ hours of sleep / work out for ~1 hour?

-Across both live and off-live deals: yes to work-out, I have a routine of working out between ~730am - 900am, shower and head to office before the 'grind'. During live deals however I can head to bed at ~2-4am so this means less sleep for the day, but I prioritize working out on those days

3. Are you able to maintain social relationships? Do your SO(s) see you? 

-During live deals: I barely see my friends, however the key has been to live with my SO (and she's super understanding, and will plan around my schedule). On weekends, I try to plan on going out on Saturday morning / lunch if it's busy and work from afternoon through Sunday, so at least I get a mental "break" and spend some time with people. 

-Off live deals: yes, my network of friends has not been as large as I'd like prior to joining PE, but I can basically have dinner outside every week day

4. Are you able to take vacation time? 

-Not during live deals

-During off time, you get ~2 weeks around Christmas, and some time off late summer as people have mentioned. If you have special occasions, people don't mind you taking ~1 week off during other period

5. How has your mental health fared?

-I was on a live deal since late 2019 through late 2020, during the sprints towards signing I got pretty stressed out so started to throw some tantrum - i.e. just completely ignoring bs admin work, sounded annoyed, etc. But everyone on deal team was streched out and people understand you're stretched out

-All in all, it's been pretty positive 

MM of a similar size

Sleep varies, lately been 6

Usually have weekend work but id say it averages out to a few hours here and there

Have had a social life but have also had stretches of pure hell

YMMV but it’s not pure darkness in PE

I'm sure you've seen this response everywhere but it really does depend on the firm and what the senior people value. On average, the bigger the fund, the more hours you'll be working but ymmv and there are certainly LMM firms that are absolute sweatshops as they aggressively expand. As you'll start at a fairly large UMM fund there's probably some info online detailing the firm's culture, strategy, and senior people. You could also reach out to former associates that have left the firm. 

At a fairly similar sized fund ($5-8b range), have a banking background myself but a couple of the kids in my class / above / below were consultants (~25% of associate pool). I think all of our experiences have net net been fairly similar in terms of demands, but it was harder on average for the ex-consultants to adjust. 

1. No, I work ~75% of weekends. 25% of the time it's a live deal sprint for an asset we're running hard at, in which case I maybe get to wake up an hour later than normal but other than that it might as well be a work day. 50% of the time it's a material portion of one/both days (6-12 hours), but the silver lining is I have the flexibility to choose when I want to do it - I can load it all into one day, I can get outdoors during the day and do it in the evening, I can make plans and work around it, etc., which I couldn't do as a banking analyst. 

2. This is very much like one of those high school / college hypotheticals - "grades, social life, sleep; pick 2, welcome to school". If you do literally nothing else (i.e. no cooking / errand running, go to sleep as soon as you log off), then yes it's likely possible to get 7 hours of sleep. Practically that's very hard for me, and would say I average ~6 during the work week (~1:30-7:30), along with ~1hr of workout time a few times a week including warm up / shower time (i.e. I may have a 1hr break between calls, I go for a 30 minute run and have 15 mins on each side to warm up, change, shower, etc.)

3. It's like the above. You can totally do it, but it's going to come at the expense of your sleep or other things you like to do. You also have to temper your expectations - I don't think you can see all the people you listed weekly, but if you're rallying with the boys once a month so you can make time for your SO other times, you can strike a delicate balance.   

4. For the most part yes, and it's largely respected by seniors, but it's hard to plan more than a long weekend. I.e. if you have a wedding one weekend you can get that on the calendar months in advance and everyone will respect you need to fly out Friday, but it's harder to put a week vacation on the calendar months in advance because you can't control deal sprints. What typically happens is you finish a sprint shortly before the August / holiday lull and you just decide last minute to take the next week off because you don't have much going on.

5. Mental health is pretty vulnerable. It's basically banking hours with 10x the pressure. No one checks your work, everyone expects you to be incredibly proactive, you are responsible for driving more components of individual workstreams, and you're also at a point in your life where you start thinking about what really matters (i.e. you may be getting serious with a SO, you want to be at your friends weddings, you start appreciating time with your parents more, you realize you don't have forever to travel, you want a dog, etc.). There are some people just built for PE (i.e. being incredible at the job while also finding some semblance of balance). If you're not one of them, you either have to prioritize trying to overcompensate at the risk of your mental health, or you have to resign yourself to knowing you won't be in PE forever and prioritize what matters to you. 

Bump

Wow this is all so depressing... I think most replies here are skewed to mega funds and in big cities (?). I work for a small sector focused fund (less than €$200m fund size) in a smaller European city (I.e. not London) and this is by far the best job I’ve had... great culture, I work 50h a week.. never weekends... even during live deals we control hours most times (because the deals are rarely competitive). Pay is lower than you would expect from London for the same title but all in all 100% worth it. Once I stopped chasing prestige (known brands) and just looked for funds that genuinely do what I LIKE to do by people I LIKED, I became so much happier.

bump

Former consultant who went to a MF PE shop. Did my two years. Left to come back to consulting. Confirming all of the above. Of my class, there were actually quite a few who either came back to consulting or went to a start up i.e. did not move up in PE (willingly) 

I can't speak for banking but consulting is actually not bad i.e. there isn't this huge urge to need to leave. Consulting also has interesting exits outside of finance (biz ops, product, strategy, etc.) that aligns to many of those from consulting whereas PE exits to strategic finance / corp dev. 

Summarize the above - it's not surprising to hear consultants are unhappy in PE when hours are significantly worse, there's much less support staff, and culture is, on average, much worse in terms of mentorship / niceness. 

Agnostic of your background, you should go / stay in PE if you're one of two types of people. 

1) You love deal-making and running a clean process

2) Power and money give you enough personal satisfaction to offset the other shit (seriously - if it does, no judgement, you just know yourself)

Many younger professionals go into PE for the latter point and discover that it's not worth it to them. There's definitely satisfaction to having power and money and for others to envy you but it comes to the downside of being knee deep in the dataroom that opened up at Friday at 6pm and the data is absolutely fucking shit (and you have ~3 portcos to track, another new deal that requires an LBO and every VP says their shit is priority)

The main takeaway that PE is bad is not the right one. The main takeaway is that all people are different and enjoy different things. As the forum shows, there are people who love the grind, love deal making, and, in turn, receive a high carry. There are those that just carry about money and want to go to the pre-GME Melvin and maximize earnings at all costs. There are those that want to build from ground zero at a new seed-round start up. There are those that just want to clock out at 5pm, flat career trajectory, but can watch a movie every night. 

You just need to identify where your true self sits and to not find yourself in the wrong bucket because that career is 'more prestigious' or 'more desirable' to you. There's no secret sauce. You live once. You work the hours. You are either happy or unhappy. Find the bucket that works for you. Don't worry if it takes ~5-10+ years. Give back / volunteer as you go

Are there any funds where it's not as terrible as some of the above comments? I have a hard time believing literally every fund is like this

I’ve worked at two funds one being a well respected UMM fund $7bn+ fund size and now an up and coming MM fund. I also have a good amount of friends who are at LMM to MF. 
 

My experience and friend’s experiences are that funds take on the culture of their founders. At the end of the day everyone works for the co-founders and those guys make all decisions. Some co-founders give a lot more autonomy to other partners/junior professionals than co-founders at other funds who micro manage everything. The latter tend to be the more intense ones. This wasn’t something you asked but I say this to say you can find a UMM/MF with decent WLB. Berkshire and Insight for example have incredible comp, WLB, and culture and they are a UMM/MF. I’ve also heard of LMM funds that are run like dictatorships. So find out as much as you can about the founders in the public domain and in the interview process. 
 

With that said it sounds like you’re heading to a sweatshop. You comment that some have said the hours are intense and others have said otherwise = sweatshop. The others who told you it wasn’t bad are either trying to soften the blow or worked at sweatshop banks so it might actually be marginally better for them. 
 

Lastly I would expect your first 12-18 months to be really rough. There’s a massive learning curve in PE especially on the legal side of things. But you’ll start to get the hang of it in 12-18 months. Also the job gets a lot more fun once you make it past the associate level. At the sr. Associate/VP levels you start to step out of the weeds, are encouraged to build your network, source deals, go to conferences and develop meaningful relationships with c-suite at portcos. You’ll also find the c-suite starting to reach out to you more as a thought partner. Those things have nothing to do with comp but are extremely rewarding, but they have to be earned and you have to gut it out for 2-3 years.  

I think it's important to note that while the partners / culture will impact your hours and quality of life, there are a lot of other factors that play into it. First, as the above poster said, the C-suite will begin interfacing with you directly (read: the CEO/CFO will consider you a free resource to them). Many of these executives are just as hard charging as the partners at your shop and will utilize you as an extension of the executive team. This may consume substantial time which is often below the radar even with your own shop so they won't factor it in when allocating work. Other considerations include buy-and-build strategies (literal constant acquisitions with your PortCos) and turnaround management. Just one turnaround / distressed situation can substantially ramp your hours for a given year and if you have enough investments you will have one (or more) of these at some point. And if you think new deal work is unpredictable, it pales to ever changing dynamics involved with a turnaround. 

So while I agree quality of life can vary meaningfully across funds, my take is that WLB and PE are an oxymoron. There have been many threads on this topic lately with many chiming in that they are happy to only work 60 hours per week at their fund. That's 9AM - 10PM monday through friday excluding commuting time and assuming one hour of non-work activities (gym, eating, etc) in there. And those will be intense hours which won't leave you with a whole lot left in the tank at the end of the day. And I agree those hours would be considered good for PE. Maybe that is WLB, I don't know. I agree it's solid for the money. One other factor to consider is travel - be prepared to do a lot of it as you move up while balancing all of the above. 

TL:DR if you value WLB then PE probably isn't a great fit

Want to add a rosier data point here. Currently an Aso at a large European MF (100bn+ AUM across asset classes, 15bn latest lbo fund) with an office in NY and US HQ in a Tier 2 city.

1. Rarely work weekends besides Sunday night "getting ahead", unless sprinting for a deal (3-4 times a year)

2. Always sleep 7-8 hours and work out almost day ~ 1hr

3. Yes - usually don't do much socially during the week to be available but if a dinner with friends or something has to be on a weekday I can carve out the 6-9p slot usually if no deals in later stages

4. European firm means vacation is generally encouraged and we have lots of allotted time, I will say it needs to be relatively planned out (2-3 months ahead so capacity can be planned around you)

5. Mental health is great. This tier 2 city has great access to outdoors which complements the protected time well for fitness / mental health

I will say that all of this a tradeoff for comp, which is at a material discount (75% of street roughly). It's made a little better by the fact it's not NY or SF CoL but it is a pain point for a fund of this size to miss on comp (especially a pain point as of late given rampant wage inflation across the street)