SM HF to LO as a junior?

The quality of the PM and senior analyst matters more than whether it's MM or LO. A great mentor can accelerate your learning far more than the platform itself.

How large was your SM HF directionally if you don’t mind sharing? How was the recruiting process as someone going from SM to MM / LO without 2+2?

one thing i'll just add is that if you're going to an LO for a role as a country generalist make sure you get a clear idea of what you're going to do and what companies roughly they want you to cover and what gap you're trying to close b/c you could potentially get pigeonholed or find that you don't have a major consumer at the platform. 

obviously you can get more coverage or change coverage or have a super clear idea of what you are going to cover but just something to think about

What is the end goal? Do you want to stay on the buyside and swing for the fences during your career or are you looking for stability? Mentorship also varies wildly on both MM and LO by team and manager. 

If your true goals is to do "2-3 years at the LO first to build real fundamental investing chops" and then really move to a MM, why not just begin at a MM? The mentorship you get at an LO might not be the mentorship you need to survive at a MM, not to mention 2 years down the road you are competing for positions at MM teams against guys that have 2 years of "fundamental investing chops" at MM and not at a LO. 

There are more numerous MM experienced associates than LO associates looking for jobs every year, so on a standard distribution curve there will be more "high quality" jr associates from MM than from the LO pool. I'm a sector specialist within a macro shop and have ran across my counterparts at both.  

What I observed from interviewing for junior associates for my own team: Good supply from MM pods of varying degrees of experience and quality looking for a shot and exactly 4 good enough to give a shot to from LO. All four of the LO candidates interviewed were of below average quality. Among the 4, one candidate had 6 years of experience at Vanguard and had no idea what he was doing. Gave him 6 companies to give me a view on over a course of a week; they were all buys apparently. Thesis for buying was not fundamental, but he essentially gave me a tear sheet that summarized each company's investor deck for growth outlook. Essentially, "look at this company's investor deck and believe things will play out exactly like they want you to believe".

MM junior associates - my take is that the firms with structured training like P72 have a decent understanding of the basics and generally have an idea how to look at individual companies via financials and sector outlook. Sometimes they miss the larger picture on what and why it matters in relation to sectors and macro factors they aren't considering, but that's technically what the PM is for. M and C I've seen both side of the spectrum where they are excellent model monkeys on quarters and are hyper focused on squeezing out alpha every print. On the other side I've met guys that are so focused on the numbers they don't understand if the numbers will push the stock higher or lower. If you want to drink by the firehose, get the basics of fundamental investments, work hard, and in theory learn quickly, this is where you want to go. Unfortunately, you are in for a grind, for not a lot of money (most likely) unless your team is crushing DD returns every year, and job stability is dependent on team return and vol parameters. 

LO jr. associates - i don't have a lot of data points, but my take is that they are generally very poorly trained. There doesn't seem to be a structured training or learning by repetition (drink by the hose) at the jr. level because there haven't been many repetition on "new" investments. You aren't really making decision or generating ideas but you function as a maintenance and "report" on the companies / sector that you already own. By nature because LO own everything in an index more or less, its about gathering data points to make dozens of decision to be underweight or overweight certain companies / sectors within your holdings. Therefore, LO jr guys are typically asking very broad questions and collecting data for the PM to make arching decisions. LO sr. guys typically have been around for decades so have seen and invested through the cycles and may have large picture views on their longer investment horizons. If you want a long and stable career but for not a lot of money for decades this is the path to be on. You start clearing 7 figures at the sr. associate to PM levels but the path way to here is much more stable than at MM. But the payout is pretty much capped at the low 7 figures, unless you have an equity stake in a smaller LO (this is a different conversation).