Top Hedge Fund Ops/MO vs. 11-50 employee boutique IB!!!!

Hi all,

I'm a senior at a target school. I'll get right to the point.

I have an offer from a top hedge fund (think top 5 and over $30 bn in AUM) to work in its Ops/MO
and will most likely get an offer from a boutique (11-50 employees) investment bank to work as an analyst. Which one would you take?

  • Both in NYC
  • HF : Top HF, Good name, but obviously Ops/MO work, O-K salary (65-70k), little or no lateral mobility within the firm, work hours (8am - 6pm)
  • Boutique IB: Small, Don't know the compensation yet (what do you think it would be around?), does most of its deals in Asia so lots of traveling back and forth from Asia and NYC, and got the sense that I'll be working like a dog (which I don't mind) based on the impression I got from its rented one room office in NYC

What are some of the things I should be looking at if I were to choose the IB over the HF?

Please help!

 

Choose the boutique IB. This really shouldn't even be a question. Ops is ops regardless of the firm that you're at. The work that that boutique does is the same that every other IB does, just on a smaller scale. If you want to work in ops, more power to you, but don't choose that HF just because of the brand name. It will be infinitely easier to lateral from a boutique than any ops role. Good luck.

 
Best Response

The only reason I can think of even considering the Ops role is if you want to go into trading eventually. You can stay there a year or two (no longer), save over half your take home pay, then go for a top MSF.

To give a more balanced view, Ops is underrated in a sense that you can learn the mechanics of products which is useful in a number of ways EXCEPT for actually trading the damn things. It will be more applicable if you are interested in derivatives, for example. How are your coding skills? Ops is ripe for automation and provides a wealth of opportunities if you are technically inclined.

With all that said, even in this case the boutique IB may be the better choice depending on your end goal. Unless you are planning to go to bschool later anyway OR if the boutique pays absolute peanuts I'd just go the IB route.

 

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