58 Comments
 
Controversial

Bx partners: 20mm+
EB partners: 5-15mm
HFs: 5-30mil (Varys greatly year to year)
Quant: ~2 mil. Comp plateaus very early
Consulting: 500k -1mil and that’s only if your Bain Bcg McKinsey

 

which begs the question, why is there such an inflow into quant by students?

 
Most Helpful

Because the work is actually interesting there.

If you haven't realized yet, most of finance (aside from quant research, SM HF, dare I say even venture) is fairly process-based and pseudo-intellectual. A lot of shit to be shoveled. It would do you well to realize, when planning your career, that certain areas of finance – notably: IB, consulting, large platform growth shops (Insight, GA), and MF PE (aka "pain tolerance investing") – all have substantial day-to-day tedium. On top of the mindless nature of the work, many of these fields also are known to have very poor WLB. If you look at a top sweatshop like Apollo or Warburg, even the partners are slugging out 80 hour weeks. 

Know what you're getting into. Don't get lost in the prestige whoring game and end up losing sight of what matters. 

 

Mostly firm dependent. I was at an EB and am in MFPE now. Several MBB friends

MF PE comp is not nearly that high. Maybe some of the more senior folks aged 50+ get there, but only a few per PE firm. Average 40 year old  partner probably doing in the range of 2-5M

Average EB partner try 1-3M in an average year. Comp at EB base of high 6 figures with 20-40% of TEV of deals you close. BB pay less. Rockstar year with $10B of M&A you brought in...thats how you hit high double digit comp

MBB consulting pays 1-2M at the partner level, with upside based on $ you bring in. Main thing here is they have more guaranteed comp and less individual % of fee revenue, as they operate on more of a profit share model

HF I have less insight into. Hugely dependent on your P&L. Can do $30M or $0M. And you can get fired much easier than any of the above

 

so many different types of partners

like in big law, there's non-equity partners and equity partners (have to buy in, have ownership) and there's like an avg 3x diff between the two

would prob say hedge funds though

 

There isn't really a "cap" per se. If you generate revenue (or profits, depending on the intelligence of management), you can get paid your cut. For example, if you are a real rainmaker and you negotiate for you to be able to allocate 35% of your team's revenue as compensation as you see fit, you'll get paid a lot more (ie - Milken). But if you are just a "normal" partner, it tops out much lower.

When you are talking partner/MD/etc level, it is hard to give generic numbers because there are very fat tails. A good answer will acknowledge this and give you distributions.  

 

Blud has singlehandedly set Amherst back by a generation. Get off the couch and hit the gym so maybe you can get some play in college and stop hyper fixating on this shit. Or get a job. At least do something of use. Fuck me, even playing video games is a better use of time than this. 

 

I guess but personally I wouldn't take an LAC over any Ivy, Ivy+ (MIT, Stanford, Duke, UChicago, Northwestern, JHU, Caltech), or a target (Georgetown, Michigan, etc) because LAC are vastly inflated w/ nepo hires. You'll also be much more prepared for finance coming from any of the schools that I mentioned above (barring maybe Caltech and JHU). 

 

Providing numbers to a question like this is a fundamentally difficult task due to the high level of variance. In some fields, this variance exists not just between individuals, but between years for the same individual. I know, for instance, HF managers who will make >$1m in a down year, but clip almost an order of magnitude higher in a killer year. 

When evaluating careers on their earnings potential, one must look at not just the average but also the shape of the distribution. Just as investors care not about nominal returns but risk-adjusted returns, a properly rigorous consideration of career earnings potential must look at the variance-adjusted mean earnings. Arguably, any attempt to evaluate the mean without considering variance (risk) is foolish at best, and dangerously misleading for prospects at worst. 

 

Ea deleniti at libero non odit. Corporis laudantium omnis aut quia qui.

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