Why do Tiger cubs/grandcubs have a bad rep on here?

Avid poster and viewer on here and have seen multiple threads shitting on tiger cubs, saying that working at one is not what it appears to be. My guess is that people are referring to 1) comp structure, your potential earnings are not nearly as high as they are at the pods and the PM/partners take the vast majority of pnl 2) .0001% of people that have successful careers at these shops never actually end up in a risk-taking seat. Yes, they might have the title partner or PM but they are really just senior analysts 3) especially in these past 3-5 years, the SM HF model has been under major scrutiny, as the pods clearly have the data edge, technological edge, and have proven that they are capable of providing uncorrelated returns with little vol. Again, these are just my guesses. I understand most of my reasons might be wrong or inaccurate. 

Reason I ask is because the tiger cubs have always interested me. The idea of learning under a proven and accomplished PM that has a strong track record and a process that has worked for years seems like a great way to obtain the necessary skills needed to launch your own fund some day. 

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They can be incredible positions if you are at the right one with a generous PM with a good culture who plans on running it for the next 10+ years and has an established $2-3B+ AUM base. Issue is finding these places as seats only open up every 1-2 years. Most associate Tiger Cubs with Tiger Global, Coatue and D1 which have had their issues the last few years. There are still plenty of lesser talked about Tiger Cubs that pay well and are doing fine - funds like Foxhaven, SRS, Samlyn, Steadfast. Also new launches like Anomoly and Surgo and similar long duration SMs like Select Equity. 
 

With regard to the second part of the question, my opinion is most people would be better off at a SM like this where they could make $500-1M+ consistently with little risk of getting fired but the ability to survive for 10 years+. Not that thats a given but lately this forum has loved to lean into the idea that everybody should jump to a MM and can go easily from Analyst to Senior Analyst to Running a Carve to Putting up MSD% at a Carve to being a PM to putting up MSD% as a PM over a multi year period somehow forgetting this is a top 10-25% outcome for a new analyst in the first part of that funnel. Sure if you end up being in that too decile you can laugh at all your Tiger Cub friends while you make $5M at age 30 but for every guy like that there are another 40% struggling to manage risk and 50% out of the MM industry or barely hanging on and theres a lot more luck in that process than most would like to admit.

 

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