Skip banking for this HF? Need advice
Hi, I just finished my summer at CVP / EVR M&A / PJT Rx. This past winter, I also interned at a 2-5B AUM hedge fund. I now have full time offers at both and am not sure which route to take. Of course I would love to skip the shitiness of banking and get to a better seat right away, but I am unsure about giving up the chance to recruit at other funds. Is the 2 + 2 -> HF worth giving this up? Not sure that I want to be a shell of a human for 4 years just to say I work at Elliot or Viking. For some more detail -
Pros to the HF
- Interesting work right away
- Both equities and credit investing will be an option long-term (fund has multiple strats)
- Good track record of returns
- Few great mentors and good culture
- Comp (300-375 all-in year 1)
- WLB: 60-80 hours/week, but with much better control of hours than I had this summer in banking
Cons to HF
- respected by those who know it, but not a big name
- lose the chance to go wherever I want (assuming I interview well) from CVP / EVR / PJT Rx
- committing to public markets investing before I need to
- expected to perform right away
Realize this is a good spot to be in. Thanks in advance for any advice.
Edit: went w the HF. Overall just enjoyed it so much more than banking and the quality of learning, WLB, and pay made it hard to justify not taking. Ty all for your input
I'd look at things in a different angle: Job prospect & optionality.
On sell side:
Things should be fine, EBs have lean structure anyway. You'll learn all the skill you need, more optionality. Exit to PE/VC. You never know what you'd like after having exposure in PE, you may end up like it more than HF or want to sink deeper and rotate to VC.
You can still have a very good exit to various types of HF, Especially if you're placed in RX and want to do Credit HF. Other HF strats (Merger Arb, L/S Equity Hedge, Activist) tends to fit people coming from IB.
On HF side:
Take a closer look at that firm strat. Next 6 months will be very quite challenging for HF industry as a whole. I saw shops blowing up here and there, along with analysts/traders being churn out from shops downsizing/turning into FO.
I suggests do more DD on the firm you plan on joining, you interned there so you should know. If that firm performs okay in the last 6 months then you can have some confidence it would stay afloat going forward.
HF strats that I recommend jumping on in this market conditions: Quant/Volatility, Global Macro, Credit/Distressed (fund dependent), Multistrat (also fund dependent).
HF strats I recommend you do further investigation before joining: Equities (especially if they're deep in high beta stuff: Tech, Mid-small Cap, Emerging).
IB sucks, yeah, but only join that HF shop if you're confident in their strat. If you're on fence on their performance going forward, then probably do IB for two years. What sucks more is doing HF then it goes under, and you're left with less than 1y HF experience and no banking experience.
Hedge fund and don't look back. A seat like that would be a great outcome from MF PE
The way to think about it....is this a role that you would take if you got it coming out of one of the banking programs that you had mentioned? If so, then take it now. If not, go banking.
If you're very sure that you want to work in the HF industry for the next 10-20 years (realistically until you retire), then I would say take the HF offer.
If you're at all uncertain (e.g., you may want to do IB/PE/VC) or you're just genuinely uncertain of what you actually want to do, then I would do the traditional 2+2. Part of the reason why 2+2 works is because it gives you more time to be exposed to these industries in a professional setting (i.e., not just reading on WSO) and gives you time to figure out what you actually like to do.
On the other hand, most of the people I know who were really suited for the HF industry knew it from day one. If you're one of those kinds of people, I would say there's absolutely nothing wrong with taking the HF offer. Understand that if you take this route your options will be fairly limited if you burn out or decide you don't actually like the job.
I was in similar shoes, I had to choose between BB IB, VC, and an HF offer.
I ended up going the HF route, since I was always dead-set on the HF world. IB teaches a fantastic skillset that will be useful throughout your career, but tbh many people go into IB to get to the buyside. I've never really cared about the firm name, since to me personally comp is what matters at the end of the day.
Ultimately your career will be fine whichever way you end up going.
Also there are some major WLB advantages in working public markets. I'm off whenever the NYSE/Nasdaq are closed, and I work 40 hrs most weeks, except during earnings season, even then it would be maybe 50 hrs tops.
Would echo MacroJunkie above, somewhat depends on what you actually prefer LT. Banking can be largely revisited down the line in a few years as an associate / post-MBA though, so it isn't completely out of the way. And being an investor in a public markets seat should have a little bit of prowess in terms of PE, albeit not a ton of direct transferable skills pertaining to the transaction process.
With that out of the way, I also went to HF out of undergrad over doing IB FT having done the summer analyst stint. I landed in a phenomenal seat in a fund of $1bn and am now a senior member of the investment team ~4-5 years in, doing deep thesis/bottom-up work across a variety of sectors all in equity public mkts. Money aside, I very much enjoy the day-to-day far more than I had (yes, intern) in banking. Hours aside that also applies, I'd do this job 100 hours a week and have no complaints. I don't need to because frankly there's likely some level of diminishing marginal return to time spent vs. PnL/idea generation, but just trying to highlight my mindset when evaluating career options.
Banking is (no offense) a job that most people can fall into and if they're smart & hard-working, can find a way to succeed in that business especially at the junior levels. Hedge funds are kind of the inverse, juniors need to be smart, hard-working, and large value adds to PnL otherwise they're expensive wastes of capital/resources. The risks are inherently different in each seat: junior IB professionals need to be cordial and coherent in a client-facing setting, not profit centers or generators for a fund's return. So the stakes are higher - just something you should know as it's a different offer in terms of what's required.
I'd say longer term, if you think you'll likely be in a public markets role as MacroJunkie wrote then you should jump straight into the HF seat. If there's more curiosity or interest in potentially going a different route and you're less certain about your 5+ year outlook, do banking. You'll at least have more optionality to have more conversations across a wider range of exit opps. Joining a HF isn't a death sentence as this advice may make it seem, it's just a very specific set of skills that seem to be marginally less transferable than what you learn in IB/PE (which serve as a base for corp dev, VC, etc., as well).
Then the last thing I'll add is the burn-out in either is very different. HF burnout is "hey I'm not generating alpha / PnL anymore" or "I'm spinning my tires working on the same 20 ideas" and those people tend to get very uncomfortable with either lacking performance or lacking creativity. The IB burnout is being a cog in a machine where it's a "necessary evil" but you're playing for the grass being greener scenario, with horrendous hours and often political cultures. If you can weather that storm ideally the PE route can be at LEAST slightly better (not always) but the work gradually becomes more interesting as you progress, carry becomes involved, etc. I think the "risks" to the HF are either 1) that fund doesn't do well and so comp upside is limited and/or volatile, 2) you dislike the role or PM and prefer to be in a more operationally focused role, or 3) you aren't good at it (only you can answer this before getting into the role). People best suited for IB/PE roles tend to have deeper interests in company's operations, transactions/deal-making, playing CFO, etc. People suited for HF tend to be a bit more macro-oriented, varying by strategy but closer to "sectors" than they are "companies" - i.e. how does the IRA impact my E&C names respectively and which should I be long or short?
Hope this helps.