HF is a demanding job and one really has to work hard.
How do you continue to work hard after your PM only gives a miserable bonus even though the fund has one of the best years?
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It usually takes a quite a while to land a new position. Meanwhile, you guys can really put on a good poker face and grind 14 hour day?
if you’re looking for validation yes it is hard and requires a lot of self control. reminds me of my first PM who was a moron want to leave those situations asap
best thing for you is be patient and keep up appearances while interviewing around at least it is a great market and a lot are hiring. day after bonus is best time to move so don’t linger or procrastinate
Is it better to interview before or after getting the bonus? When do most people get paid?
Is the job market good for macro?
How did your PM perform? Really that's the most relevant datapoint here.
It is a terrible industry. Leave while you are young and can
Absolutely. Where would you go if you have the chance?
how bad was bonus? how good was performance? what reasons did the PM give (yrs of experience with ramp)
how did your names do, both absolutely and relative to your sector coverage?
was fund coming out of drawdown?
Completely irrelevant unless another company is willing to offer you more.
There's a lot of junior analysts in the world with unrealistic expectations. Go on a few interviews, find out if you really are underpaid or not. But just because the fund had a good year doesn't mean every junior analyst should expect a windfall. (Converse: when the fund does poorly, the junior analysts should still expect an OK-ish bonus, even if the PM himself gets nothing).
Or in finance speak, analysts don't have as much beta to the fund performance.
he didnt say he got a disappointing bonus, he said it was "miserable"
could be a case of expectations but when i hear miserable im thinking he got like 150 base + 50k or something when the fund made a billion or [plug in ur numbers along those lines]
The OP didn't share his age, experience, the size of the fund, etc so I can't comment on him specifically; but assuming he's a first year at a mid-tier fund, still learning the ropes, no direct PNL responsibility, for all I know maybe he joined right out of school in May and hasn't even been there a full year yet...
In that case, then actually yeah, I *do* think 150 base + 50k is a realistic number. And I think that number should be fairly constant regardless of whether the fund is up big, down big, or anywhere in between.
The other side of the coin is they often are - but there are switching costs to moving (non-compete, risk of new seat being different than marketed, time to interview) so it enables management to underpay. Have seen many examples of management creating false expectations for what bonuses or career trajectory looks like resulting in nasty surprises at bonus time after work has already been produced / outcomes have already been delivered.
Good leadership communicates expectations clearly so there aren't surprises (one of the great things about being in a pod model with a formulaic bonus - or when SMs provide clear guidance on how comp works). The main incentive for a fund to be ambiguous on how bonuses work is to have you produce output with an inflated expectation of what it will lead to. Management tends to inflate expectations when it is self serving (e.g. when getting a new hire to sign, or when the fund is underperforming and they need help to dig out of a hole, etc.) and knows if they published comp expectations / trajectories in advance they would have a harder time hiring / would have to pay up for talent (part of the reason MMs are so aggressively bidding up for talent).
Agree not much information to work with and there are many worlds where the comp could have been fair / OPs expectations were wildly unrealistic - but generally if you're grinding 14 hour days, fund is having one of its best years, and bonus is "miserable" something is probably wrong, at the very least the fund should do a better job setting expectations.
OP here. Sorry don’t want to disclose more information before landing another position. Just one more red flag or maybe not (some people don’t want to take on PNL). Only two people including PM in the team have PNL. Others including those five to seven years with the team don’t. This is now it is structured.
this seems very normal and common?
If you're not getting paid well with respect to street it means the seat you have is a bad one. They don't view you as a value add. Either work your way up to a good seat internally or leave for a better seat elsewhere if you're ready.
how was personal performance and contribution?
but yes, leave asap
Time to plan for an exit. I'm trying to leave my firm for the exact same reason albeit PE vs HF.
Same here brother :(
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