Haven’t seen one of these for HFs this year so thought I’d start.
1st year in pod shop, joined in 2Q. (3 YoE)
-$350k total comp, not much PnL responsibility yet
Interested to hear y’alls. Make sure to add years of experience. Hoping everyone had a great year!
| +152 | Q&A: I'm a Pod PM | 81 | 1h |
| +51 | When giving reference to a sexist - would you care? | 9 | 4d |
| +18 | PE to SM HF | 3 | 4d |
| +10 | Should I get an MBA for VC after Tech PM? | 2 | 11h |
| +9 | Stay or leave? | 1 | 9h |
| +6 | Lateraling to MM L/S | 1 | 2d |
| +3 | Buyside to Sellside | 1 | 10h |
| +2 | New launch down >500bps, >100% turnover | 2 | 4d |
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Bump
L/S equity pod shop
This year should be 3.5-4m depending on year end
Last year 3m
Title?
YOE?
that is great. congrats. do you think you are an outlier for your shop or in reasonable band of outcomes?
Title = analyst
This is year 7 for me
Don’t think outlier, 30-40m PNL range not outlier
6th year in a pretty large macro/RV rates pod at a MM. ~2mm depending on last few weeks of the year, performance was decent not amazing
Can I PM? Just have a couple of questions
How much total experience?
2.5 years s&t at a BB bank before starting
Can people include total YOE as well as HF YOE?
DELETE
no trolling please. let's have a useful bonus thread for once
American working remotely for a European Family Office.
Got laid off b/c CIO left and new CIO couldn't make money
0
Never work for a European
Never heard of such story before. Sorry man
sucks for op but not uncommon in this industry
-150k. Clawback
Thats rough. Usually the new firm pays for the clawback. Is it not the case for you?
Ignore title, 5 YOE at MMHF and will make $3.5 million this year
Do you have a carve out?
Is it systematic equities?
Ignore title, 1 YOE in equities, 10k pitty bonus, SM closing up shop. HH are ghosting smh
1 YOE total or 1 YOE within equities?
is this a troll?
I wish…
Candlestick?
4 YoE in IB and 2 YoE at SM Family Office (LO equity). $310k last year ($175k base and $135k bonus). Base this year was $190k and expecting higher percentage on bonus given strong performance (maybe $200k or thereabout) for a total somewhere around ~$390k. Good luck all.
Hours?
8am-5pm consistently with zero weekend or holiday work (literally haven't worked a minute on a weekend in over 2 years). Adjusting my full year comp expectation to ~$450k after finding out cash piece this week
$3.0mm this year. This is my 6th year on this team, 7th year on the buy side, and 10th total YoE. This is my best year so far, but every year I’ve seen YoY increases.
Strategy is SM distressed, special sits, and event-driven, with a very wide overall mandate. Performance across vehicles ranged from good to great.
Ignore title - I work in Rx Consulting and would love to move to a distressed/special sits seat at HF one day. Any advice on how to make the transition for an atypical candidate?
Hey, very interested in special sits/event driven, can I ask what your background was joining your fund and any tips for breaking into the strategy?
Prior role was MFPE at a shop known for distressed investing. Best way to set yourself up for this role is to go through a restructuring analyst program or join one of the remaining sell side distressed desks.
is this Redwood?
No, but we have similar investing styles and overlap on a lot of trades.
Can you give an AUM/IP figure? Any idea of fund levg? Are you just doing public distressed or some DL as well? Either way, congrats to you, hope you get that $B.
~$2bn per IP
Can I DM. Want to shift into Special Sit/Event Driven
has to be arini or diameter.. congrats
Neither of them
Do you feel like you got paid from your hundreds of milion P&L that you generated in the last few weeks of 2024 from last years thread?
debatable… did even better this year
congrats on the big year. does your firm hire via recruiters or direct networking? how did you break in?
.
Giving SM HFs hope. We usually see massive payouts mainly from the MM side
This sounds like Knighthead
MMHF, a few years of experience, expecting 800-1m.
How much pnl did you generate and the whole team?
At these comp levels, why would anyone not want to work at a HF? Seems like a guaranteed path to mid 7 figure net worth in a relatively small amount of time…
Survivorship bias
The red dots are most people sharing.
EV of the career is at best in line with other similar careers if you have the chops/background/aptitude to get into a decent HF. You are just seeing the top end of the distribution here. Plenty of donuts / 250-300k years for a lot of people. Or you get kicked out and can't get back into the industry.
You could be late 20s working at FAANG making $800k - 1mil with stock appreciation and a more applicable skillset. Far more of these people than HF.
4 total YoE (2 in PE post college, 2 at current fund)
Large L/S Tiger SM
750k base + 1.2mm bonus
Inaccurate shitpost.
I work at a tiger cub and know people across all the major SMs. No one is paying ther numbers
not true. i know of a few large sm where those numbers are accurate…
The base is mores suspect than the bonus arguably, especially at.. 4 YOE?
No way. Anything is possible with the bonus, but 750k *base* at 4 yoe? Not possible at a HF. At every fund I've worked, no one (and I mean literally *no one*, not even the billionaire founder CEO himself) has a base salary that high. The sky's the limit for the bonus, but the base is always capped at like 250 or 300 or something.
Maybe a bank might pay a base salary that high, but not for 4 YOE.
Looking at around $2M I think - nothing formal yet.
It’s my 4th year in the industry, although I had another unrelated career previously.
Team made about $120M. I was responsible for about $35-40M of that under direct coverage. Strategy is special sits/event driven.
The number is on the low side as a percentage basis, but the fund offers much wider risk limits than pods do, so I wouldn’t have been nearly as profitable in a pod structure. Not sure how to balance those two factors. It’s a lot of money either way for a fairly easy job, so I’m fairly satisfied.
Do you mind sharing how many YOE?
4th year in the industry. Had an unrelated career previously, so I’m a bit older however.
3 YOE at SM after 2 IB. Weak year for fund TC 625k
Adding a realistic one to keep this thread grounded
SM HF, 4 YOE but first year at this shop. We are up 50%+
$150k base + $150k bonus
Last two years (C/M/P pod)
175k base + $100k severance (team blown out - not by me)
$175k base + $75k bonus (really got fucked by my PM this year)
This job has been frustrating from a comp perspective.
How common do you think this compensation history is? Do you think you skew higher or lower than most of your peers?
If your fund is up 50%+ this year, how does that not translate into a meaningfully larger bonus for you?
I think it’s def more common than threads like these would imply - which I why I posted
On the second part - yeah I’m a bit surprised. I think it’s just greed.
Going to stay patient and hopefully this grind pays off one day.
How big of a fund?
$1-2B in AUM
Bonus seems low, unless your individual performance was poor.
Dam
Are you in a junior or senior analyst role?
putting those middle school math skills to use, after compiling the numbers posted so far we get a distribution of outcomes with a mean of $1.2M and a median of $175k.
Not even factoring in the obvious sampling bias yet, and this actually does a decent job of reflecting the industry and showing why its a ridiculous question to ask what the 'usual' HF comp is... looking at you, PE tourists
now lets all go back to swooning over the fat tail
SM L/S
Big year for team
2yrs with fund / 4 YOE overall
$700k TC
MMHF - systematic equities
Yoe: 5-10 (less than 5y in HF world).
Base: $200k
Bonus: $200k
TC same as last year as pod blew up.
$10bn+ SM L/S
2023: $500k
2024: $650k. Was also a good year (better than 25’), and I had expected at least a million
2025: $800k. Pretty pissed. We had a solid year and I was responsible for a good chunk of PnL. Thought I deserved a few million
2026: probably leaving to a pod. Learned the hard way twice and underestimated how low value analysts are to CIOs
Before HF I did 2+2.
For what it’s worth, I had a similar trajectory at a SM HF in the $1-10B range. Comp was range bound for past two years after 2+2 at around $500K-$1M. Fairly sure I would have gotten the same even if performance was bad so there is a trade off in terms of protected downside / capped upside. I’m honestly okay with this as long as comp steadily increases going forward.
This is the most relevant post on this thread. 500k - 1.5m is generally the range at most SM style L/S. trade off is longevity.
Do you source ideas or just analyze a list of ideas given to you? Trying to understand a s a private markets person. And if you source, how is it done? Is it hard?
SM L/S $1bn
YOE: 5 (Did 2+2 prior to joining a HF this year)
TC: $200k Base + $200k Bonus. Fund and individual performance for the year was good.
Might be time to make the switch to a pod. SMs really can't compete with MM and PE anymore.
Are you talking about SM performance (returns) or pay outs to IPs? I’m guessing somewhat both, but anything specific around why that performance lags?
It was a good year. 2.4 cash comp, plus a few hundred k accrued deferred comp.
10+ yoe, my average is probably 1.5 cash
What’s your net worth? Any advice you would give to someone much younger that’s entering a similar comp trajectory (1-3m)? I have averaged 1.5-2.5m and think I should stay in this range for a while until I become a PM.
Would you do anything differently with your PA/deferred election?
About 10. I have enough to retire, given my spending. Will probably work for a couple more years. I'm pretty boring in my PA.
Best advice is to not spend like you're going to average 2 mill a year. These jobs can disappear from under you.
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-
Macro -
1.7mio cash on 15mio PnL as sub-PM in 1st year.
7 yoe buyside, 0 sellside.
Congrats! How has this progressed through time, and do you think 2025 was an atypically strong year for your niche?
Macro absolutely killed it this year. Congrats on great performance!
Definitely strong for my niche. I actually feel like I underperformed where I should've been. But good sharpe and increased allocation this year.
Last year 700k, previous years have been 250-500k total comp
do you not feel like an absolutely crazy person writing 1.7m as 1.7mio?
decent year for fund, 9 YOE
SM L/S HF about $500mm. TC should be $900k-1mm, is formulaic and based on base + points in the fund
congrats! could you pls share what's the formula and points is reasonable to ask in such fund for ppl with ~10yrs experience?
Most places offer low to mid single digits % of the firmwide carry pool to their partners. Can be fixed or have a jump ball component. Might depend on how big the fund is, like higher % if smaller fund and vice versa, and whether you joined closer to when the fund was started. Assuming fund is of some scale, would expect target comp in a decent year to be $1mm+. YMMV, but general round numbers.
SM performing credit HF. Bonus flat y/y, $700k. Total comp of $900k. I have 15 years of experience. Am not in a “Tier 1” city.
2nd year at SM HF
8 YOE
Fund is $2-5bn AUM
$400k all in cash comp last year
$750k all in cash comp this year
Salary $225k rest is lump sum cash bonus
Seems ok / low end depending on performance.
How was fund performance this year?
1st Year. Systematic FX single manager. 250k bonus (hit my 1st-year cap in May, really stupid to cap the bonus imo) (+125k base, for total of 375k comp, all cash). We did really well this year but as a 1st yr my comp has zero beta to performance
MMPM. $90M PNL. $300K base + $9M bonus. Based on this thread seems like my analysts should be pretty happy.
grats; any tax tips?
What did you pay your analysts (approx) and how did you think about their bonus (if discretionary not formulaic)?
I performed well in my coverage, my most senior guy did great, second guy was meh, and newest junior obviously is still just doing blocking and tackling mostly.
Formulaic plus a buck or two for my most senior guy for being with me from day 1 when I wasn’t a PM (came outta my pocket).
Second guy didn’t do so hot (up +lsd% after flat last yr and generally a tougher space), but massive process improvements in my eyes after taking in my feedback. I still have him on an upward more fixed scale and his choice whether to go more formulaic or not as he’s year 3 now. But big implied pay bump in $ terms.
Junior who isnt super young but junior in this job took a large pay cut expectation to join me - I made him whole plus some as sign of good faith (also outta my pocket).
How much of the 9M bonus is cash vs deferred?
All cash
SM analyst to PM: "yes, keep holding $1B of NVDA"
NVDA goes up 50%
SM analyst: I deserve 5% of that
SM analyst is disappointed when he does not, in fact, deserve that
if you're overweight relative to your index, even if its a mega cap, why wouldn't you get paid for that?
because any monkey can say "own mag 7" its utterly replaceable
you dont "own" the name even if youre the one making the models (well, more likely outsourcing it to some Indian consultent these days while you just listen to the same expert calls that 1000 other people are)
$650k all in. 8 YOE, 4 years at current shop (2+2 and then MBA prior)
Medium sized SM ($1-5bn) that had an awful year (though my stuff did fine). Very disappointed.
Regret leaving pe?
Ehhh all the associates at my old firm have mid ass careers because the PE shop failed to raise its next fund. Some associates had to lateral thus extending their junior period by 2+ years, some had to move out of buyside, some went to "VC" funds with $150mm AUM. I also have friends who were associates at firms half the size of the one I started at which did well and are now raising $1bn funds. As a result, my friends got vacuum sucked up the ranks to be principals in their early 30's making $750k cash, $500k+ in (paper) carry per year. I feel vindicated in my belief that success in PE appears fiarly random whereas public equities at least you can have some impact on the fund's performance.
I can spin my tires in my current seat and keep career optionality open. I'm fine. If we get back above our high water mark, then I will realistically make $1-2mm. That's what they did to the senior analysts who toughed it out last time.
Ignore title. Sub-PM type role at a $1-2B SM, 7 YOE, fund did very well, made $7M all in.
TC $350k. Total yoe 2yr. Buyside 1yr. Fund did poorly but team did well. SM
Bump for any recent data points
5+ YOE, 3+ buyside, event driven SM. TC $415k. Decent fund performance and above avg team performance. >$500m AUM per IP. Thought # was fair to low ish, but feeling underpaid after seeing thread
Don't forget to haircut each comment by 50-75%
and then add the 95% of data points that are missing
Big 4 MM
Total YoE: 2.5
At buyside: 1.5
Got base bumped from 150k to 175k
Bonus: 325k
Team had a decent year
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