At the end of my rope, need help

Hi everyone -

I am in desperate need for advice, currently going through a really rough patch and would really appreciate any insights.

I’m currently a 2nd-year associate at a ~$4-6B PE fund in a major U.S. city. Before this, I was an analyst at a larger PE fund, and I did undergrad at HYPSM. I really enjoyed the PE work as an analyst, but the culture was toxic— inappropriate senior team members, mid-level managers taking out their problems on others, horrific hours. I burnt out fast and needed to leave ASAP.  None of my analyst class is still there.

In my rush to leave, I joined my current fund off-cycle, drawn in by what was unfortunately an overly optimistic pitch. Here’s the reality of my situation:

• No Dry Powder and poor performance in current fund: They claimed plenty of runway for new deals with a freshly raised new fund, but by my start date (six months after the interview / 1 year after the fund close), they had spent almost all of it. their earlier funds had top-quartile returns, but they made poor investments by deploying their  current fund as quickly as possible (deals with little governance, slow growing, etc.) with hopes they could raise yet another fund before returning capital from their current one. Unfortunately there wasn’t much data on the current fund publicly available, and it was hard to get specific numbers in the interview. I wish I pushed them more than I did, but think part of me was so desperate to leave the other job that I was willing to trust their earlier performance (albeit they are pretty new compared to other funds but had some impressive names on the senior team) 

• No Fundraising: Fundraising for a new fund has been nonexistent despite it being more than 1.5 years. The team had to let go of a lot of junior people in the past couple months 

• No Deal Flow: Due to poor fund performance and little dry powder, most of our time is spent managing investments rather than pursuing deals. I haven’t been involved in any live deals past round 1 (apart from some small add-ons) meaning limited model reps. I’ve advocated several times for more reps, but we can’t bid competitively on much due to low capital.

• Low Morale: the culture is becoming quite sad - and we have almost no social events anymore (not even offsites). This was originally a major selling point to me and initially I really did enjoy the people and culture, but my best friend as well as my mentor recently left, along with several others (coupled with the associates who were let go). 

• Toxic Manager: The worst part—I’m stuck on a portfolio company with a narcissistic manager. This manager has lied about me to cover his laziness, and once berated me for 2 hrs because he didn’t like my “tone”. he was reprimanded by HR. He repeatedly dodges responsibility, then shifts blame onto me. This has continued as recently as 3 weeks ago. Every associate he’s worked with has a problem with him - even senior members do. I’ve asked to switch teams twice now, but the senior team wants me on this project due to my strong performance on it, as I received a really great year-end review in August.  They’ve also negated my complaints saying “i need to be patient with him” This has made me shut down and feel voiceless.

I know I need to get out, but the main questions I’m struggling with:

• how do I find the energy to leave: I’m emotionally and mentally drained, making it hard to apply for jobs, network, or prep for interviews. My self-confidence is shattered, and I blame myself for much of what I’m experiencing.

• how do i craft my narrative to recruiters: I’m interested in exploring other opportunities within investing (open to earlier stage / corp dev / and PE) because I do enjoy the type of work and have spent so much time developing this skillset.  But this would be my 3rd buy-side job post-grad, and I worry about appearing as though I’m job-hopping because I’m not doing good / not up for promotion at my current job. The head of my group has already said there’s a good chance I‘m getting promoted given my performance but i personally can’t stay here. Should I be blunt about the fundraising / deal rep situation to recruiters or will that come across the wrong way?

• how do I factor in an Abroad Experience or B-School? I am struggling with burnout from having lived in the same city my entire life. I’ve never spent time abroad because I had a sick parent throughout all of high school and college, and after graduating I foolishly chose to go back to the city I grew up (a large one) because I thought the job opportunity I had would be worth it. I asked my current team to let me spend a few weeks in our Europe office, especially since I’m unable to transfer off the portfolio company with the difficult manager. They agreed it was a good idea but ultimately said no because, “everyone would be asking for a transfer.” There’s a part of me that is considering b-school abroad instead to take some time to breathe, recharge and maybe learn about different career paths. But now that the investing job market especially at the mid-level is a bloodbath, I’m scared to hit pause on my career for that long with no certainty of a job after. I want to try recruiting for jobs in London but I’m a US citizen with no clue how the sponsorship process would work. 

I feel truly lost. Any guidance would be appreciated. Thank you.