THE prestige path

I know this is a retarded post and I’m gonna get flamed but I have to know

For context : I have no chance at any of this, bottled first round of pjt worse than the clippers did game 7 rn

If every wso user dreams of this path :

PJT RSSG / GS TMT (2 yrs) —> BX/KKR (2 yrs) —> H/S MBA (2 yrs) —> SM HF

What is THE SM HF to complete this journey?

And how many ppl actually get this path done and what do they go on to do?

Thank you in advance for answering this imperative question

51 Comments
 
Most Helpful

Get a life bro, cringe af

"If you don't have any enemies in life you have never stood up for anything" - Winston Churchill | "It's a testament to the sheer belligerence of the profession that people would rather argue about the 'risk-adjusted returns' of using inferior tooth cleaning methods." - kellycriterion
 

I think it’s easy to feel this way in hindsight, but even 5 years ago the recruiting timelines and expectations of a sophomore in college were not as radical as they are now. Obviously it has always been tough to break in, but the majority of people who do so now are 100% sure since week 1 of college that this is what they want to do (and it’s mostly because of peer pressure).

 

Yeah I remember seeing that, poor guy got hated on so much he had to delete his account

 

Thank you good man, you’ll be in my thoughts when I jerk off tn

 

is bill ackman actually prestigious? like every time he tweets or says something on cnbc, there's like 100 headlines across every news publication

 

There is a big difference between prestigious and effective. I would say his fund his undeniably prestigious, as demonstrated by the media coverage it garners. His investment performance or the content of what he says, not so. But that is exactly the OP’s question: what would maximize prestige, not how to actually become a good investor (there is still a weak correlation between the two).

As someone who has walked part of this hallowed path, 90% of our people are just insecure overarchievers who can’t take a risk or think independently if their life depended on it. They just want to fit in and look impressive at cocktail parties amongst their circle of prestige obsessed friends. And that’s okay too.

 

No Pershing is an insanely sick role. You get paid easy 7 figures even at the analyst level and Ackman is actually pretty nice to his juniors and you have a ton of job security (and also don't work that hard tbh)

 

Pre-2023 or whenever it was a handful of tiger cubs, pershing, elliot, TCI. idk now

 

Wage cuck in dying investing format no hairline no testosterone get married to mid sorority girl who cheats on you with the personal trainer pathway

 

Why is this so accurate😭😭. Dude I remember I broke up with one of my exes and she’s like flexing that dudes at aforementioned “prestigious SMs” are simping for her and tryna wife her up. Like I’m not a woman the social proofing doesn’t work for me I like u or I don’t…unless I’m all the kids in the IB/PE forum haha

 

Nobody with an IB/PE background is going to end up doing quant at Renaissance

 

Are you living in 2011? There’s no SM promise land anymore. That was a free lunch that’s long evaporated.

The best seat you could maybe get is landing at Pershing — they’ll hire someone with absolutely impeccable pedigree maybe every 3-5 years.

Otherwise, Viking is the only lasting HF promise land. Same thing goes, need exceptional pedigree, and they’ll hire someone every 2-4 years. It’s also brutally meritocratic, so if you’re on a very obvious trajectory to be a money maker in a substantial-7 digit annual comp bracket, you’re history.

Buyside is about punching hour ticket to getting into a seat where its heads I win, tails you lose. That used to largely the case in PE, and has to some degree corrected. In the HF business it used to also be playing on easy mode once you got in — clipping incentive on market beta. But now that’s also corrected and  you have to actually earn your keep, and it’s not by having gotten into Princeton when you were 17 years old.

 

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