Thoughts on Holocene Advisors?

To those asking I think I've only ever been involved in some early stuff in an interview process with them, so cannot comment on length or process there.

From my understanding they are somewhat of a blend of typical multi-strat (Citadel) and SM & sector-head style models, where they have a group of sector heads that likely manage sector books, senior analysts that perhaps manage sleeves or manage several analysts who all specialize in 30-40 names within 1-2 sub-verticals. From what I've heard pay seems pretty good, they do hire a decent amount of folks from IB --> PE backgrounds (for better or for worse lol). I believe they have a little bit more flexibility in the risk model than the avg. pod and slightly more duration as well... meaning they aren't really playing 3-4 week bets and maybe playing a 2-3 month bet with a lot of different tilts overlayed. If Citadel manages to a 95% idio then maybe these guys aim for north of 80-85%? 

I think they're decently strong, returns I think are OK as far as mkt-neutral guys go but as long as you aren't in the bottom rung (Baly / Schonfeld) no one will give you a hard time.. same goes for the top rung (Millennium / Citadel, who have their own grievances). 

What I would note is that Holocene I've seen has a slightly better "hit" rate of MM folks who try to migrate to SMs which suggests to me their work product is a little bit more hybrid in that they aren't just pair trading and managing risk as tightly as possible.. this could just be a long shot and while some analysts there probably stink (normal distribution of analyst talent) they may have a process that allows for guys to do more deep-dive real work.