anyone know a&m RX/other shops comp compared to mbb?
interned in MBB and thought it was just not technical enough and maybe i’m better suited for something in RX.
curious how the comp varies? mbb seems like 110 base + 10-12 relo/sign on + 15 bonus with ok scaling. how does this compare to top RX shops and how can i recruit from them?
is comp meaningfully better?
rx co is meaningfully better at a&m because of their hourly billables structure, alix should be higher but not as high and fti is the cheapest of the three and wouldn't be meaningfully higher. unsure of progression as you go up, recruiting for rx ft is more of a tossup compared to mbb where every year they will hire large numbers, relaly depends more on intern retention and overall hiring needs since class sizes are much smaller. you can apply as a new grad or lateral in after a few years which is relatively more common in rx co
any insight into when rx apps open up? and for a&m new grad, do yk what comp is like on avg? like obv i want some work / life balance but im working 65 hours a week to make 130K id rather work 70 and make 180 haha
the timeline for rx co from college is shifting heavily, some of them opened sa apps during banking timeline this year, so unsure but i would assume apps open up after the summer. i doubt there would be an accurate avg number just cus of how variable hours can get but have heard comp and hours can get pretty similar to banking
Like the other guy said, meaningfully better at A&M, but also at other non T1 shops. For some reason, lower tier RX co shops pay more than the T1s (maybe because of smaller headcount). But, T1s set you up best to move downstream. Recruiting isn't easy, compared to MBB classes are miniscule, and I personally haven't seen many MMB ppl in the field not sure if that's because they don't apply or because they don't fit in. Best bet would be to lateral after 2 ish years bc that's when the most recruiting happens for RX consulting.
Hours can be tragic, I've seen threads on this forum with 110+ hrs, which I'd say beats IB. Upside is higher comp.
I don't work at A&M or those Tier 1 shops, but I feel like 110+ is probably during the worst weeks of a project when you're at a critical point (i.e. finalizing a business plan, about to run out of money, etc.). There are definitely times you have to grind in restructuring, but I feel like the average is closer to 60ish. Outside of the bad periods, most of my projects were more like MBB in that we worked quite long days M-Th, F is a lot more chill, and weekend work was usually not required outside of crunch periods. To give you an example, when a project was more stable, our hours were more like 8-10 M-Th (plus travel) and 8-3 on F. The worst week I could remember was 8-12AM M-W, 8-10PM T-F, plus 8-12 hours over the weekend.
Maybe A&M/Alix and a few other top boutiques that I've heard are absolute sweatshops are radically different, since they work on bigger companies/deals, but RX tends to be more of a "lifer" role than other jobs in finance. There are definitely busy periods, but my own experience and others I've talked to make it seem like it's much more manageable than IB or the buyside overall.
Very helpful. Thanks so much. Do you happen to work at a boutique (“T2”) or a big 4 within the RX arm?
I rotated to the RX arm of a Big 4, but am now in the process of interviewing with some smaller boutiques (couldn't transfer due to big firm politics). There are definitely firms that have a reputation for being as rough as A&M/Alix, but I think most of the industry is slightly more chill than them. MM companies also just have less to do overall - you'll just have more responsibilities since the team is leaner.
I also feel a really underrated skill is being able to cut through/process data really quickly and in a replicable format. One of my team members was really smart and a top performer at the firm (got sponsored to get his MBA, etc.), but would have the messiest workbooks that took 4-5 hours to do what should realistically only take 2 max if he structured it appropriately or were better at churning through data.
Realistically though, a lot of your experience will come down to your team. If you're on a toxic team, it'll be really difficult to survive because there's infinite ways to skin a cat and some people will want to look at everything under the sun. To really drive this home, at my Big 4, the worst project I ever worked on wasn't the RX project or anything strategy related. It was a boring ass IT implementation project that had a clueless SM, a Partner who didn't manage client expectations, and a (non-PE!) client that kept changing their mind literally every week. My team was also terrible to work with, which made it even worse. I was literally working 16-18 hour days + weekends for a month on that one - brutal.
A lot of this is luck of the draw, but if you find people you click with, make sure you knock it out of the park for them and make them want to keep you on their engagements. That'll determine your happiness moreso than what type of work you're doing, etc.
Correct, the thing is there's a fair amount of engagements that'll have a stretch of really bad weeks, and that's when you predictably hit 110+. So, yes in the grand scheme of things the hours are "better" than IB, but there's a pretty good chance that an engagement will have a particularly bad stretch of weeks
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