FT Partners Culture/Fit
Hi Monkeys! I'm considering a lateral to FT Partners because I'm interested in the fintech space, but I have a friend who works there and he said that the culture is terrible, everyone is overworked, they spend more time working on teasers than actual modeling, and the exit opportunities are poor because PE firms know employees don't develop as good modeling skills as they would at other banks. Does anyone have any insight?
In the class above me, there were 2-3 analysts who were suicidal (I mean it). This was all because they were so focused on being top-bucket that they would try to be perfect in every way (like waking up at 5am on a Saturday to check for emails from their MDs so they can respond to them: "No problem, [insert MD], I'm happy to do it. Please let me know if there is anything else you'd like and we will be on it!"). If you want to be top-bucket at FT Partners, you have to be ready to be hospitalized or scarred for the rest of your life. This does not mean you can coast. They still stick to GS standards of the bottom 10% being asked to leave after the first year. I saw this happen for three years even to Associates and VPs. The good news was that because so many people left all the time, it didn't look too bad when such people left after a year on the job.
The majority of analysts every class for some reason have a HUGE chip on their shoulders and are very insecure to the point that they will suck up to every senior and do whatever it takes to please them. If I or any other analyst who was not part of the "in crowd" walked into the kitchen or bullpen while they were talking, they would refuse to tell what they were talking about.
If you think FT Partners sucks on the banking side only, you are very wrong. Their research side has a lot of turnover as well and most analysts don't even want to become investment banking analysts after two years. Also, their People Ops (HR) team has a lot of turnover all the time. They didn't even have an HR team before 2017. One of their co-heads of HR left a year after creating the entire HR division and the other co-head left last year.
I could go on for hours about all of this but I will stop here as I know the CEO, HR and their tech team are constantly watching these forums trying to find out and dox people who post on this site.