Longevity of Hedge Fund analyst career?
Any thoughts on how sustainable an analyst career at HF is given the many headwinds? (commodity skill sets, industry overcrowding, consolidation, too much capital, shift to passive, growth of algo trading, etc.) Do most people do 5-10 years stint and then leave for other pastures?
In many shops there is a degree of "up-or-out" in the sense that you're given a few years to learn the ropes and after that you're expected to start generating ideas on your own. Also, comp doesn't really start to ramp up until you get direct P&L linkage to your own ideas. Basically it's rare to coast along as a career analyst. Either you're good enough to survive the initial shake out period (typically 1-3 years) and you start generating good ideas and you will want recognition/reward for that, or you're not able to generate ideas and you get pushed out.