Title more or less says it all. What do you guys think the best PE firms are, with regard to culture, prestige/exits, comp, etc, for the associate experience. Really don't want a banking 2.0, but want something that provides similar career progression potential.
Appreciate your guys' time.
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the best PE firm is the one where
you get along with your supervising manager,
where there's a good culture of collaboration,
where there is a decent brand,
where there's a culture of promoting from within, where there's clear path to that promotion,
where there's a shot at getting carried interest sometime in the forseeable future
where you like their sector and methodology (ie. you love healthcare growth capital deals they do, you like their TMT buyout strategy, where you love their value-add methodology, etc.)
Agreed wholeheartedly with earthwalker. I know you're probably looking for actual names of funds, but I would always encourage you to network before you recruit in order to get information first-hand. There is no better way.
With that said, if you want to think about megafunds, yes, I have also consistently heard terrible things Apollo. More than other firms. On the other end of the spectrum, I've heard pretty great things about Bain Cap. Think Advent also is supposed to have a better culture than most. (This often seems to correlate with the number of ex-consultants vs bankers.) But it needs to be reminded that every firm lies somewhere on a spectrum, and that spectrum will be different for each person depending on how you personally get along with the people there.
Appreciate it man.
Can you please stop calling everyone man? Not everyone on this forum is a guy.
Lol I call my fiancé man/bro/bruh all the time. Didn’t mean any harm by it. Use it more as a gender neutral term. My apologies for coming off as a douche.
No one's great. A few of the better large cap funds based upon current and former associate anecdata below. Note that these places will still have their tough moments but they seem to be more livable. The only pattern is non-HQ offices
Advent Leonard Green Apax (excluding NY) EQT (US only) Hg (US only) Welsh Carson TA Associates (excluding Boston)
TPG (especially growth) is pretty chill. Warburg and Carlyle are generally sweatier
Might be more helpful to call out sweatiest funds: Apollo, Lindsay Goldberg, Thoma Bravo.. I've heard second hand will make you wish you never left banking..
heard apollo has some great hours/culture, wonderful thread on it recently