Shortest Pod Shop Stay
What’s the shortest stint youve seen at a pod shop before getting canned? You ever see anything shorter than a year without the pod blowing up or anything similar to that. Did they get fired? Or left on own accord
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Have seen 3 months, 2 weeks severance
One of mine was quite short. Left a macro pod after 2 weeks.
How did you move to your next gig after that? How is the stability on the buyside for macro?
Wow I can't even imagine
3 months
2 months
2-3 months very common
For PMs or Analysts/associates beneath them?
Only speaking from my experience, but all of these were analysts/associates not able to find a seat after team blowing up or just having a bad PM who fires people after a few months (rarer but I’ve seen it). I was honestly really surprised how common it is for PMs to make a hire even when situation is clearly dire. Just my 2c from own experience
a birdie in the middle office at a major MMHF told me the median tenure of a PM is like 9 months (including only the time spent trading). a lot of people who don't understand how to actually run a book just blow themselves up very quickly rinse and repeat. we both agreed the recruitment process can be very wasteful.
3 months lol
Does anyone have any context for these short stays?
Bump
Wondering the same thing. Were these smart people with no investment experience and just had no idea what they were doing? Or just ppl from IB who thought a MMHF was the next best thing but weren't really interested? How does this even happen?
not sure how anyone who could make it through the interview would get fired in 3 months. probably the guy's PM got let go
Have seen this go down a few times. Normally it's a first-time PM from the sell-side. Normally it's because they learned bad habits at their bank that just won't fly at a fund and they refused to adapt; or they just lost too much right out the gate. It's either that or a blow-up artist whose already on a very tight leash.
I personally know people who were fired after 3 months without team blowing up, so just out of PM being a bad person. I think you overestimate both the efforts these PMs put into interviewing as well as how much they care about anyone other than themselves
I’ve seen plenty of 3-5 month stints. In a rare case of an ahole PM, even 2 months by 2-3 of his analysts.
Typically PM blowouts, i.e. analyst starts in feb/march after his bonus from previous buyside/sellside shop and PM crosses thresholds in June.
Heard thru grapevine that balyasyny took out most of their consumer teams last few weeks. Such is pod life - getting severance for Thanksgiving.
What happened to those who were let go after just 2-3 months?
This was at MLP and at that time (2019-2020), MLP gave people 1-2 months on payroll to look internally. So people either transitioned to another PM internally, found another HF job outside, or exited after those 2 months and continued to look.
Unfortunately, I saw a lot of these go down in Sep/Oct and hiring materially slows down in Nov/Dec so those paid months didn't result in any successful searches. I saw some of the younger ones readily transition back to banking b/c they had their first taste of a volatile career and only saw downside volatility.
This is just a part of the pod business. For every PM/sr analyst on here who's making LSD-HSD millions, there are multiple more who've burned out and are switching down to lower tier pods before exiting the business in late 30s. The base skillset and drive were very similar across most of my peers in mid-late 20s when jumping to pods but their success at mid-30s has largely been a factor of whether they joined a good PM or not...very tough to diligence unless you're already an HF analyst for several years and have connects.
Yes many below 6 months and have even seen 2 months. Risk/Sr management can very quickly see a person is not the right culture fit or is not executing the strategy they proposed.
Very difficult to fire a fresh analyst before 2 years but have seen PM and more experienced analyst butt heads very fast and writing was on wall.
I have no real basis for this claim, but based on anecdotes that I’ve heard, I’d bet there are more analysts fired within 6 months (either team blows up or PM doesn’t like the analyst) than promoted to PM.
Left after 2 months in a macro due to a stop out. Happens a ton. Usually has little to do with the analyst, and far more to do with market conditions, the PM or even politics (the risk limits are a mirage, most get cut before it is hit)
Have been under a year in two jobs- one because of compelling offer elsewhere, one because we lost money quickly
Rare to see a blow out that fast for a PM imo, unless misrepresented track record or something and lost a LOT of money out of the gate. This happened during COVID but clearly a tail event. Most guys don't gross to 100% of capital day 1. So if you're 50% deployed and your first limit is 5%, you have to lose 10% to get cut in half. If you hit that fast, management may step in and just cut you. But honestly even if you tried to lose 10% fast on deployed, may be harder than you think as lot of places impose risk models from the getgo to prevent this. Other cases I've seen, usually longer than 6 months (most PMs given a few months to build team, infra etc. before trading, only the greedy ones deploy immediately or if opportunity set is truly that rich), are massive bets gone wrong, which is more a reflection of poor risk management skills ie not really based on experience level imo. Usually young guys that are given a shot at PM are actually good - and grew up in the weeds of pod analysis / trading / judgement.
From the PM perspective, similarly, I've had an analyst interview well but struggle to do the job. Just poor attention to detail, screwing up really basic things repeatedly, not doing what they've been asked to, not meeting deadlines etc. Just 101 stuff you need to do well in anything in life. Sometimes these things are just hard to screen for until you work with them daily. And then it becomes clear that it's just a personality / fundamental issue where you know they're not suited for the business. So better to make changes sooner rather than later than be hamstrung.
Curious other people's perspectives.
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