Burned out at dream job - time for a change?
Would love some honest feedback on my situation...
I have worked as a post-MBA equity analyst at a top LO (Cap, Fido, Welly, TROW, D&C) for about a decade. I have always thought that I would stay at my current firm until retirement, but over the last few years I have become extremely burned out. My performance has struggled recently, which in this profession means more stress, more hours, and less pay. While my numbers aren’t poor enough to get pushed out (and I am very well regarded internally despite recent struggles), I am concerned that a couple years of bad performance 1) puts a ceiling on my comp for the next 3-5 years, and 2) decreases the probability of promotion to PM. While it’s not essential to me to become a PM, I find myself less engaged and less fulfilled by my work. I have also been feeling more of the negatives of the centralized research structure whereas earlier in my career it felt like more of a positive - I used to enjoy the autonomy and the multitude of smart investors to learn from, but now I just feel like I have to hold everyone’s hand and explain too many things to too many people. Really I just feel like I’ve become an internal sell side analyst and I’ve hit a wall in my development. I am not someone who can keep doing a job just for the money - I need to feel challenged and engaged.
I have increasingly been thinking about taking on a new role at a different firm. One opportunity I am looking at is an associate PM role on a small team with a style that fits my strengths, but the comp is lower and the firm is less prestigious (though still well regarded). The idea of doing something new (even for less money) is exciting to me, but I don’t want to fall for a “grass is always greener” philosophy only to find out later that the problem is not with my job but with me. I am very interested to hear people’s honest thoughts on burnout, how you deal with it, how to know when it’s time to move on (especially if you’re in what you thought was your dream job), and whether you think I’m crazy to consider leaving – much appreciated.
It's not an easy decision, you're in a forever job if you want it. I'm sure you've already meticulously evaluated the pros and cons of each scenario. There's likely still a lot of uncertainty so you'll only know in hindsight if it was the right decision to stay or leave. If you do leave, try not to second guess yourself and really try to make your decision the right choice.
Turnover is low at LOs for good reason and that low turnover creates immense pressure to stay. Why leave if no one else does -- is something wrong with me? And because it's a coveted role with limited seats, it makes you want to stay even more. "Other people want what I have!" (I think this can be a trap). Where I am, most of the time traffic is one way and people typically don't leave except if they retire, find a seat at another LO, have consistently bad long-term results, or do something unethical that hurts the firm's reputation. It is basically against consensus to leave "early".
Can you give some color on comp over your career? So hard to find data points 10yrs post MBA - thank you!
Comp is notoriously secretive in this industry which is why it's hard to find data points. From a high level, post-MBA equity analyst will go from about $400K to $1M over 5-7 years depending on performance, and then $1M+ with upside to $3M on a truly stellar year. The highest-paid analyst likely makes more than the lowest-paid PM at most if not all of the top shops.
I felt the same way a couple of years ago. I started getting back into exercising more, trying new activities on the weekends, etc. which all increased my energy and revitalized my desire to go to work and try to lead others. 100% understand that your question is more career-change related but thought I would add my perspective since I was in a similar boat. Taking measures to re-energize myself made a huge difference in my overall mood and experience at work.
For reference, I experienced burnout in a couple prior roles and am about to start in a post-MBA analyst level role at one of the firms you mentioned.
On burnout, I found that I first needed to do a real assessment of my life outside of work. Am I happy with my social life / friendships, hobbies, romantic relationship, physical health, mental/spiritual health? A couple times when I thought I had work burnout, I was just in a really bad spot in one of these key life categories. When something here isn’t right, my negative perspective started to blend into every other aspect of life, making it hard to delineate between real/not-real issues. Maybe this is obvious, but that’s where I’d start if you haven’t.
The next step was breaking up my work into the components that are bothering me. For you, it sounds like three pieces: (i) limited near-term comp, (ii) lower odds of PM, (iii) central research role. With these I’d just suggest you make sure to compare your current situation to the reality of another job you are considering. I think it’s important to not compare your current satiation to the one you previously had, or the one you imagined yourself having by now. That thinking tends to lead to career transitions that end up being regretted in my experience.
From the outside, it sounds like an odd move to go be an associate PM at a smaller shop for lower comp. This helps on the central research frustration, but unclear on the other two. If I were to leave a dream role, I’d want equal/higher comp, real visibility to being PM (if not directly a PM), and a move away from central research as you noted. Part of the appeal of these roles is that while you are having some tough performance, I imagine you are still clipping 7 figures while you wait for your performance to hopefully turn around and then can start your case for a PM seat again.
Another part of your post that stood out to me was the idea that your current seat is going to have lower pay, more hours, more work. Is this all self-imposed? I’ve tried to think through how this stress would weigh on me down the line. And honestly, I’ve jotted down to remind myself that a great investor is right maybe 55% of the time. You are going to have bad multi-year stretches over the course of a long career. Your high performing years weren’t a result of longer hours and more work. Your return to better performance likely won’t be created by more hours either. Stick to my process, keep refining it, and the odds will turn back to a 55% outperformer in the long run.
My personal response here would be to try to manage stress/hours and see if I can turnaround performance in the next 2-3 years. If I do, I’d start making waves for a PM role and see if I can get any visibility on that. If I don’t get visibility on PM (and still want it), or my performance doesn’t turn around for quite some time (and comp + upward mobility odds continue to decline), I’d then open the types of roles I’d be willing to consider a bit further. I just think moving for less money into a non-PM seat is a tough proposition. Having to rebuild a decade’s worth of internal reputation is a lot of work, and leaves you with no guarantees.