Job Satisfaction in HF
Recently scrolling through the top posts all time throughout all the forums and seen many posts from IB/PE guys complaining about their jobs: hours, how meaningless they are etc. but have never seen similar posts in the HF forum even though those problems aren’t really devoid from the HF world. So basically do people who work at hedge funds genuinely enjoy their jobs compared to other roles in high finance?
The trade off is worse/less standard comp. Fairly common to get zero bonuses or fired vs years of carry accruing over multiple years. Plus worst exit opps vs PE
Are you in the right place?
Keep in mind, this is from the ER guy who couldn’t land a buyside job to save his mother…. Worse/less comp? What world are you living in.
facts guys. don't overweigh a couple outliers that got lucky
10/10.
seconded
Pros of HF (vs other high finance jobs):
- extremely well paid for what you do and the skills needed
- Intellectual and you can be very good at it even if super nerdy
Cons:
- can be extremely repetitive
- obviously can be extremely stressful/soul crushing
- No real exit opps
I dont think ppl are more or less satisfied than PE/M&A or others.
The reality is that most ppl begin in IB so all the people who dont really like high finance will complain about it. By the time, ppl go to HF, they will have already passed 1 or 2 hurdles, and will more or less know what they are getting into.
If all grads began with an HF job, I would think they would probably complain a lot abt it.
Another theory is that there is less BS at the junior level bc less admin, leaner teams, etc.
Is it really repetitive? I'm trying to make a move to HF from IB due to all the boring repetitive number crunching.
Hi, i know more than one year has passed, but could you clarify why you consider the job repetitive?
I know ppl who spent ~10 yrs in HF and then went corporate at a pre IPO startup so i wouldnt say no exit paths, they just change. I also hate the notion of exit paths bc it assumes youre always trying to exit something even before you start it. At some point you will find yourself spending decades in the same field. Cant hop around forever. first 10 or so yrs out of college yes but after that you have to pick a lane and not look at the exit ramps
also survivor bias given career is so short
The nature of my work is more enjoyable. I am not making working group lists like in banking or processing repetitive deal flow like in PE. If I fat finger a cell in a model and the IRR is off by 0.5%, nobody knows (PM really just wants to hear "buy" or "sell" and bullet point level explanation of why) and even if they did know they wouldn't care whereas that could be a career ender (not something you get fired over but could absolutely sully the waters in the minds of superiors and therefore block a future promotion) for an associate in PE.
Most of my work is research related: reading filings, transcripts, equity research, market research, relevant white papers, etc. If you like learning then its fun. However, something I didn't anticipate is that HF work never ends. In PE, I rarely thought about work on the weekend. In HF, I never feel done. You get daily grades from the market and frequent reminders from your PM about how your position is doing. This is all very nerve wracking and makes it impossible to unplug completely. I absolutely dread checking the tape when I know it's moving against us (fund is long only with sector concentration so frequently have days where we're down 2%+, which has $5mm+ implications on the fund's annual carry, scraps of which come to me).
Uhh, not sure what PE fund you’re talking about - I worked all the damn time on the weekends in PE and I choose to work on ideas or do some light updates on the weekend as a HF analyst. Both are dependent on firm/group culture but if you poll the average PE associate/VP and HF analyst - I would wager that the PE guys work more weekends.
But the point on little misses is spot on. Your idea shouldn’t center on some super precise detail unless you know the market will pay you for getting it right. Mislink a model in PE (or God-forbid, infra) and you might seriously limit your long-term career trajectory.
I should say that in PE, when I wasn't either a) staffed on a post LOI and/or term sheet deal or b) working with a portco that was in shit-the-bed mode, I hardly ever worked on weekends, at least not more than a half dozen times in the few years that I was there. The two deals that I was staffed on that were consummated each put me in work around the clock mode for 6 weeks including weekends while the portfolio company that we effectively ran for 6 months had me run the model for a budget process and a debt deal which each put me on the phone with the CFO just about every weekend. So if I had to guess, something like 20-25 working weekends out of 100-150 weekends as a PE associate. As a HF analyst, I am constantly tempted to get a jump on the week by doing 2-3 hours of reading on a Saturday afternoon and it's essentially mandatory to catch up on weekend emails and news flow Sunday night for at least another couple hour or so.
How's the job satisfaction for people in hedge funds who write code? Whether its quants, engineers, data scientists, etc.
I moved from FANG to Big Quant. I work 40 hours per week and make maybe 30% more than FANG. On a dollar per stress-hour basis, I might have the best gig in the world.
I think a hedge fund is for people who are really passionate about doing a certain type of investing, and an will be happy doing that, and probably unhappy doing something else. And it is possible to make a fortune doing it. And people who decide to do it are probably happy doing it. I think PE is more of a track, but it's more of a grind. Doing a deal to buy up a bunch of veterinarians, ok it makes money, could be exciting for some, repetitive and dreary for others. On the balance, hedge fund space is probably less hours, but less security. At a PE, you might pull an all nighter, but a hedge fund, you'll have a night where you're not working, but you won't sleep.
I think the general consensus on this forum is that the ideal track is BB IB to some kind of PE. I'm not really sure what's being optimized. Money? Risk reward? Getting something that is most competitive to get? But at some point you run out of track and you have to decide what you want to do with your life and for some people a hedge fund is going to be more fulfilling than a PE shop.
The simpler answer is job satisfaction is high when performance is good, job sayisfaction is low/depressing when performance is bad
I see you are a hedgefund PM. I hear you it sucks when performance is bad, but everyone has a bad period once in a while, and long term is what's important. Does that mean it's a bad lifestyle? I think what I've seen is that there are people who shouldn't be running hedgefund money, and there are people who can run a hedge fund. People are somehow in a PM seat, but they are all hat and no cattle. On the other hand, if you can run a fund, yes you could get unlucky, but you wouldn't be so afraid of the risk all the time. What do you think?
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