Just as some context, I spent 24-26 working at an elite single manager then 27-28 at an elite trading firm, then 29-31 as a startup founder then VP at a Series A startup.
At 25-26 at the elite single manager, I made $450K all-in which is roughly what I make now at the startup as a VP. My understanding is this is basically 99th percentile in terms of cash comp at startups and it's basically because I got acqui-hired with unique and highly valuable skills.
What kind of sucks is that if I were ever to leave this startup at work elsewhere, I would immediately take a pay cut of roughly ~50% and make roughly what I made almost a decade ago, which is sort of demoralizing. But the plain reality is that senior exec roles, even at elite startups, don't pay nearly as well as fairly junior roles in elite HFs.
Fwiw, I actually do find the work at the startup more interesting than working at a hedge fund, mostly because it's very "real." It's real in the sense that I have PnL responsibility and feel like I have control over the outcome. I feel like I'm solving a very complicated puzzle that mixes, quantitative, qualitative, managerial/interpersonal and operational considerations. I have a very cool role, but to be honest I feel a bit trapped. If I were to leave my role at any point, I would make an amount that would make me feel like a fuck up. But I also have to work an insane amount - honestly more than I did in banking. Because I honestly think I'd take a paycut of 50% if I were to ever get fired or something I work kind of an insane amount.
(Just in my personal journey I've realized I have a lot of serious mental health issues with respect to work and am probably the work equivalent of "orthorexic" and I also have a serious anger management issue. The biggest benefit to having left finance for a while was actually that it gave me an opportunity to express emotions that I had previously suppressed, like anger. I had already treated issues like anxiety/depression when I was younger, but these were not the root of the issue but rather were second-order effects. I was too afraid to ever be assertive when I was younger, to express personal needs or to set boundaries, but I honestly never noticed this when I was younger since I was too afraid to do so. Working at a startup the power dynamic shifted greatly, which allowed me to realize I had these emotional regulation issues for the first time. I totally hate how I feel trapped now, but also I mean I guess I'm also admitting that I am just the type of person that feels very strong emotions like anger quite easily.)
When I look elsewhere it's really unclear where my skillset would be most highly valued. It's really hard to find anything that pays an amount at all similar to what I used to make in finance. I personally think this experience is super valuable and has helped me see the business world in a whole new way and, plus, it's triggered a new chapter in personal growth I otherwise would have never achieved. The transition was completely necessary in my personal journey as a successful person that is admittedly a bit crazy and eccentric. That said, most finance employers don't see this way. When I interview now for finance roles, I get 90% less interest than I did before. I sort of thought that I could easily go back into HFs, but it doesn't look like that tbh. Once I left the golden path, the number of interviews I got to stick around dwindled rapidly to the point where I don't think I could break back in very easily again at all.
So I've tried to figure out what else pays similarly well but it's pretty tough. Unless you're C-level and maybe 10 years older than I am it's really hard to make what a hedge fund analyst (even a junior analyst) makes. But also maybe I just don't know what's out there. Honestly, my only encounters with rich and successful people are in the finance world since I didn't grow up that rich.
Some options I've considered are:
- Late stage kind of complicated fintech startup as a VP-level exec (similar to what I'm doing now, but maybe somewhere later stage that values my finance skillset more)
- PE operating exec
- Crossover fund, but more on the late stage pre-IPO venture side
- Venture studio
- (I think traditional venture is sorta gross so I wouldn't do that)
- Go back to graduate school of some kind
Curious to hear if any thoughts from people on this forum
How do I get your brain
Probably you need to be somewhere on the autism spectrum and/or have ADHD that manifests as kind of extreme hyper-focus on work (which I didn't realize was a coping mechanism for what is in actuality a difficult-to-resolve issue of how my natural attention is directed, so I have always blamed my employers for this when really it is probably a genetic issue) and difficulties with emotional regulation (which I never noticed until I left finance). When I say hyper-focus, I mean I struggle to do anything that isn't work, but this isn't necessarily because I love work. And that is largely because I struggle in general to initiate new types of tasks but don't struggle to continue tasks that I start. So, for example, I will have extreme difficulty remembering to book a doctor's appointment or text back a friend or take old groceries out of the fridge, but I have no trouble staying up until 2am working on a model for work. When I am not hyper-focused, the alternative is often worse - I end up doing nothing at all. After starting a company that I was ultimately acqui-hired out of, I had a period of 4 months in between and this is where I first noticed this. If I wasn't obsessed obsessed with work, it was a niche non-fiction topic that I could read about for 16 hours. I have a really strong interest in rise/fall stories of American business history and went through a period of reading about that for weeks without stopping. Or it was video games. There was a 1 month period, where I finished a new video game every 3-4 days because I could play for 16 hours straight. But when I didn't do this, I would sit in a pit of despair where I struggled to do anything at all. I would go on long walks for 10 hours a day. Kind of importantly, even when I didn't have work in the way, I still didn't do the things I had always put off in my personal relationships for my personal health etc. For the first time I realized it wasn't work that was the issue - it was how my brain naturally is wired with respect to attention.
It's easy for people to bucket you in with certain finance tropes and for me to accept those categorizations. People want to assume my brain works like "omg money - it's never enough" or "woe is me I was abused as a child and have self esteem issues so I throw myself into work." But neither is true. It's that I have to hyperfocus on things naturally and it's just less bad that it is work than other things, so I naturally threw myself into work.
I attribute myself leaving lucrative roles in the past mostly to me not having enough self-understanding to realize how these mental health issues led me to struggle professionally, build up a lot of anger, then eventually engage in self-destructive behavior (like Juuling, drinking, pushing away others in close relationships). To be clear, my work itself was always excellent, but I struggled emotionally because I blamed my lack of balance on my employers when in reality it had nothing to do with this.
If I was to put my attention into toy trains or something fucking weird, I probably could but it would eventually take up everything in my life. But it's almost like something has to monopolize my attention and the least bad place for it to go in a capitalist society is into work. A lot of neurodiverse people commit suicide because life is honestly hard if your interest happens to be weird shit that doesn't pay well. In my case, I'm lucky that I have a tiny bit more control over where my attention goes than a classically autistic person, but I still unfortunately have this issue where my attention is almost always monopolized by just a few things.
It also wasn't a straightforward case of anxiety/depression or poor self-esteem, so I don't think it was properly understood by healthcare professionals for at least a decade (mostly because gifted/successful neuro-diverse people are very rare. having a unique brain isn't correlated with intelligence and the mental health issues that come out of that present differently than a classic case that doesn't come with high intelligence).
People in corporate who stick around and climb the ladder have far better-earning potential than the vast majority of hedge fund people with far less stress. The majority of HF analysts are flailing around between getting blown out of pod shops and making $500K. Stick around at Mastercard or something for 20 years and you'll be clearing $500-1M all in consistently.
People on this forum vastly over estimate HF earning potential for the bulk of people that enter the industry vs corporate.
Moving up the ladder at a F500 requires a lot of politics and a certain personality. Also, it is not just sticking around for 20 years for the career trek you mention you would be moving roles every 2-3 years and basically have to align with a future executive and give your soul to follow them, bet on the right horse and you will be the next in line. Bet on the wrong horse and you may be looking for a new role during the next re-org.
Replace "F500" with "single manager" and its the exact same shit. Only likelihood of outright failure in the latter is much higher