How to adjust to Hedge Fund culture
I'm a lawyer in London and just moved into a VP position with a leading hedge fund. I worked in financial services before but this is my first real job in house.
I've been here a few months and I really find hardly anyone is chatty or friendly. I am finding that a little difficult as I've come from a law firm and tend to be friendly with people etc.
Is this normal in hedge funds? Or is it because I'm a new face? Anything I can do? The firm doesn't even have many social events or things people across the firm can do together. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
It's a difficult position to be in.
My experience has always been that the legal team, operations, risk, etc were always sequestered away from the trading floor (even in relatively small firms), and so day-to-day cross-over was relatively limited. Sure, I'd occasionally bump into one of the lawyers getting coffee at the same time or even go to their office to seek their advice, and yes I'd be polite and ask how they're doing and wish them a good day, but really they were never in my immediate sphere of concern.
This wasn't me being callous: it was a simply fact that the nature of our two roles were very different. Whereas my work was "continuous" in the sense that it never had a completion point, the work of the legal team (at least, from what I found) was more project based. As a result, and because they didn't deal as frequently with counterparties, they had a lot more flexibility in terms of how they chose to schedule their workload. This, unfortunately, inhibited my ability to be more friendly in terms of taking 10-15mins to chat more casually.
The additional issue is that legal and, in particular, risk are often perceived (wrongly, I might add) as naysayers. They are the gatekeepers and it is their responsibility on a broader level to safeguard the wellbeing of the firm from needless risk or legal exposure. Often, this boils down to tempering the risk appetite of traders, which can be interpreted (by the traders) as making their life more difficult. The downside of this is that there's often an underlying adversarial dynamic to the legal/trading relationship. As a result, it's not unexpected that some traders may even choose to keep their interaction with legal even outside the office at arm's length.
In short: yes, this is somewhat normal (although the degrees to which it's true vary), and no, it's not because you're a new face, but rather because of what your face represents. In terms of changing this, all you can do is to attend company socials when they do crop up and do your best to integrate with the wider firm. More generally, rather than trying to build more personal relationships during the day when traders, etc are likely to be more busy, save it for after market hours. In 9/10 instances, traders will be too tired to want to go out and socialise, but if you ask on a Thursday or a Friday, they're more likely to be game. It's nothing personal, simply the nature of the business.