Corp Dev and Strat salaries

During deal crunchtime, hours are closer to banking (70 hours a week) for brief periods of time but there is a lot more variance in hours outside of that. Sometimes 20 hours, sometimes 50 hours, sometimes in between, depending on the deliverables and projects. I'm mostly WFH and there is no facetime even when in the office, so usually have plenty of time to take longer lunches, run errands, etc throughout the day. 

Not a sexy industry, and LCOL / MCOL area. Sorry but I dont want to get too specific 

Sorry. The lingo:

What is HCOL / MCOL / LCOL?

The low end of that range (and the high end, somewhat) has actually dropped meaningfully, as I later learned high performance and strong company growth are both required to hit that threshold. I would say now the range is closer to 15-40%. The reason behind the change was that I was operating off of data points from only bull years

NYC

Hours vary but consistent with what others have said. Most weeks around the 40-50 hour mark.

Maybe something like 10-15 weeks in the 55-65hr range and 3-5 weeks at 65+ hours.

No need to apologize (shake that habit!).

The finance team I was on basically acted as support on all things Corp Dev worked on (akin to outsourcing modeling to another IB group). That was our day job but we supported a pretty active Corp Dev team which required us to moonlight as traditional FP&A folks to capture and forecast the impacts on various "Outlook" scenarios.

I think Strategic Finance -> Corp Dev is possible, especially if staying in the same industry or even better pivoting internally (your valid argument of seeing the finance side makes you a better deal person holds more weight internally). Based on your phrasing it seems you exited IB and are currently in a Finance role? If so, I don't think your chances are hurt by that at all. In fact, your odds are much better than someone like me who did BO -> Finance -> Corp Dev

I can't answer your last question for all of Corp Dev because of how much comp varies company to company and industry to industry. I can tell you that we've hired people with anywhere from 2-4 years of experience in at the associate level which probably scrapes the lower end of your range. We have Sr associate then Manager (WSO defaults it to VP I guess).

Frankly, I benefited from a good bit of luck which allowed me to come in at what I think was the upper end of what I "deserved" in terms of title and subsequently developed some really good relationships with mentors / managers here which has resulted in quick promotions. We also went through a long exercise to try to normalize compensation closer to that of MBB as we source a lot of talent from Consulting / Banking. Having collected some data on forms like WSO and anecdotally from friends / peers I do think our comp is on the upper end of Corp Dev. Take those two factors into account when comparing what I've commented vs. others.

Is it pure strategy consulting or more like implementation, transformation, augmentation, etc... My job doesn't pay as well as consulting, but top-notch WLB, good facetime with execs, and interesting work(go-to-market strategy and acquisition/divest strategy.) We do use MBB from time to time, but for less exciting work like I/T/A or work where we need data that can't be found through CapIQ, Pitchbook, independent ER.

Hi! I think it’s obviously a very personal / situational decision. I knew pretty quickly that IB wasn’t for me, but only wanted to leave for something that felt like a really compelling opportunity. Then I was approached by a headhunter for this job - and it checked a lot of boxes for me (in the industry I wanted to be in, small team, also involves strategy work….)… so I really felt good about taking it and haven’t looked back! I also was one of about 7 analysts in my class who “left early” so that def helped - and FWIW I don’t think any of us regret it but again, very situational decision. Hope that is helpful context!

Hey, I was in the tech group at a BB. Honestly got kind of lucky with this role and found it through LinkedIn- but this was back in 2021 when the job market was super hot. Wish I had better advice then to just set a ton of LinkedIn alerts and be vigilant on the emails you get from recruiters, but that’s how I got lucky here 

Hey- good questions and def good things to be very mindful when you’re looking at Corp Dev. There is a TON - and I mean a ton- of variance on pay / progression depending on what company you’re at. Definitely was not something I was totally dialed into when I joined where I am now (I get reached out to all the time for Corp Dev/ strat roles that pay $30K more than I’m making now, albeit mostly in industries that aren’t as cool as sports/media!). The paycut sucks tbh but it’s definitely helped by the fact that Corp Dev/Strat is a really awesome place to get your feet wet for a couple of years, and then decide where you want to go from there. The exit opportunities from Corp Dev are extremely vast. I get inbounds all the time from VC, consulting, banking, and other corp fin roles, and more often than not there are tons of opps to transfer to other departments in the company (product, marketing, ops, etc) given where corp Dev sits in the company ecosystem. Not to mention, B school is always an option and positions you well for that given how much rope you’re given in junior roles. So a few years of temporary bank account sadness is IMO worth it, for the 1) ability to actually have a life 2) tons of great experience 3) doors opened across the board. 
 

To your second question on upward mobility- again, definitely dependent on where you are and the general philosophies at the company. At my company, it’s quite frankly really difficult to move up the ladder, which is super annoying. But given that I knew Corp Dev was going to be a temporary stop for me, this wasn’t really the end of the world for me. But compared to banking that is extremely structured in terms of promotions- Corp Dev is definitely not like that, in my experience. 

It was the pretty standard corp dev recruiting experience - just networking and putting my resume out there. I would determine where you want to be geographically, and if there are a lot of opportunities start honing in on industry and/or company stage as well. For me, I was hard set on a specific T2 city, where I’m from, and wanted to be at a startup. Let me know any other questions you may have!

The trade off is: worse pay for better WLB. If WLB is important to you then do it.

50-60 hour weeks.  It can spike up quite a bit depending on deliverables / deal activity.  

Few different reasons

Old Company/NYC:

• Poor culture + high turnover - tenure at the corporate office/level was about 1-1.5 years or less
• Team culture - I was lowest on the team and the only one to not have IB experience - I feel like I was looked down upon and my ideas were thrown to the side
• Execution - M&A execution was sloppy and put too much strain on sellers; lost a lot of deals
• Apartment/Rent - Apartment sent me a new lease for ~65% more than what I was currently paying, so was looking to move anyway. I would have loved to stay in NYC though

New Company:

• I knew of the VP from my previous role, worked at a different portco but for the same PE company. My previous C-suite had good things to say about him
• Timing - VP had been trying to recruit me for about a year. Reached out to me again a week after my apartment sent me the new lease, so I decided to move forward and see where it went
• Compensation - Take home comp is actually the same if not slightly more due to different taxes

Lol if only I didn't just have a kid, almost everything else outside the 20-30 has been baby duty. Maybe I'm just lucky, but so far in corporate 20-30 hours on average has been the weekly trend across three different jobs.

Mid-sized public tech company.

I think moving into corpdev shouldn't be an issue for you especially since you have that past IB experience. That being said 1) depending on your YOE you'll probably have to come in as an associate or manager vs. the director and above level unless there's substantial strategic / corp finance component to the role, and 2) open roles seem to be relatively scarce recently due to economic uncertainty.

I think switching industries could be a little tricky once again depending on your seniority. I think at the lower levels it's a bit easier to bounce back and forth, but once you've gained a good amount of momentum in one industry it becomes harder IMO. It also depends on the industry too - switching from retail / consumer products to restaurants / hospitality is probably not that big of a jump, but going from manufacturing to SaaS is going to be a lot harder.

Feel free to DM and happy to share, would rather not out myself

The 1st one. They had the best combination of pay, benefits, and culture compared to the other offers.

No idea but for managers probably in the area of 170k - 200k base with 15-20% bonus and 20k RSUs if I had to guess based on my level. Can't see them giving much less than a 50k base raise for a promotion and I will be getting bumped to 130k base halfway through 2023.

It was honestly a nightmare. Was probably spending 20 - 30+ hrs a week on recruiting on top of my banking day job. Opportunity identification, applications, and first rounds with recruiters take up a lot of time even if you put minimal effort in because you have to quickly build a pipeline of interviews with the intention of getting as many offers outstanding at the same time. Would do probably 30 minutes to an hour of prep (or more, depending on the title of who I was scheduled with) for every recruiting call and had cast a wide net for roles (strategy, corp dev, and strategic finance) across industries far outside my IB coverage range because I was looking for a specific geography vs. industry.

Many calls went nowhere because companies would continue recruiting even if they had an offer outstanding and I had more than a few modeling tests, case studies, and even an IQ test. Once spent 40 hrs on a case study across three days bc I built the model and deck from scratch. Ended up with 3 incredible offers and each one came top of what the recruiters had indicated so all that work definitely paid off but it really burnt me out. Getting a good offer was no easy task and required all of my energy and commitment. A significant number of people do IB with no intention of ever working in PE (myself included) so the talent pool you're competing with is top-notch and you can't just luck into a great offer, unfortunately. Best of luck and feel free to DM with additional questions!