Beyond Miserable - Tough Time Deciding To Quit PE / IB Life Altogether

Discussion aside, for those jobs what school did you go to? 

del

I had similar sentiments as you in my 20s, and I'm in my early 30s now. 

Would just toughen it out. Honestly, those job offers are an insult.... You can do alot more especially with your background (have a similar background to you) Maybe try family office, fof or Asset management? You want to be on a track where you can see some visibility to making 1 mill in your early 40s. Life is very expensive these days. 

I run a business now, went many years without making money but doing OK now. Lot of risk/stress but not putting that many hours. 

I was in a similar situation as you, with less prestigious experience (non-target, lower BB bank, MM PE) and decided to look at the family office / CVC world. They can pay $200k-$250K with a much better WLB at 40-60hrs. I landed a pretty sweet gig that is well within those ranges I just listed. I still find the investment strategy interesting, I'm learning/networking daily, and there is room for upward mobility. I have a buddy at a top CVC that is working ~50rs for 250k. 

The landscape isn't as straightforward to navigate.. but I'd recommend taking a look. 

Life's short man. Trust the gut.

following

Let go of money.  Find your true calling.  It will make all of the difference. 

I can relate to this - seem like a similar background to me. Opportunistic private credit can offer great comp and hours. You will likely be successful / climb ladder easily given work ethic and technical skill level that others in credit don’t have. Id stay away from direct lending given process oriented hence opportunistic credit - some interesting stuff, great comp and great WLB. I am confused though because Id expect PE even MM to be over 300k for first year associate especially given your background 

Definitely no need to be sorry. Generally think everyone goes through the motions one way or another after a certain amount of time on the grind as well as thinking through their next career steps post "high finance". From what I can garner, you're generally smart and have promising offers outside of finance, but the real question is what work do you actually find interesting? As others have mentioned, there are other jobs on the buy-side that offer better WLB doing different investment strategies – wanted to at least call out as your current offers don't explore any of that. 

Speaking from personal experience, I had very similar thoughts after finishing my 2+2. Ultimately moved into a role similar to your 2/, early hire on the strategy and finance team of a unicorn start-up – honestly worked similar hours to what I did in PE, but had an extremely fulfilling experience and have found it to be invaluable to my career progression and network. Will caveat that your experience with offer 2/ will be highly dependent on the role and people within your team as well as stage of the company (similar to what you mentioned, the team I had joined and built over the years was primarily all ex-bankers). 

In terms of career progression and comp, I think there's a more clear and manageable path upwards as well as healthy equity upside (dependent on stage of company and value creation). Am now at the VP/Director level (at similar standing to VP/Principal to my friends in IB and PE/VC), less cash than compared to IB friends but not too far off from PE/VC with the potential to be ahead given an exit. For your offer 2/, there's likely a bit more juice you can squeeze through some sort of sign-on / relocation bonus but the main thing not mentioned (and likely far more important in the long run) is the equity piece. 

Bit of a stream of consciousness, bear with me.

This is what you already know - you might get to partner / millions, you might not, but either way you have to grind for it.

Just no idea if that money will be worth it in the end - This is the part you need to answer for yourself. What is it worth to you, and none of us can give you that answer.

To make it to that level, partner in PE, MD in banking, the top tier of anything, there has to be "love of the game". We all love money but there has to be an element of interest, passion whatever you want to call it. It's a marathon getting there, not a sprint, and there has to be more to your motivation than money.

Can you imagine dragging yourself out of bed every morning, dreading another day at work and hanging on just for the pay? I know you can, just from your post. That's what burnout is.

I am a lot older than you. When I was your age I almost took a corp dev job post PE that would pay about 150k all in - this was over 10 years ago. If money is important to you, don’t do it. You think you’re miserable now but in 6 months once you’re sleeping 8 hrs a day, working out, and getting off work at 5pm - the reality is going to settle in. You’re going to get bored. You’re going to get sick of the office politics. You’re going to hate that you’re a cog in a wheel. You’re going to hate that you have no impact and are layers below any sort of real decision making and won’t be in that room for another decade. You’re going to hate that your comp goes up by 5-10% a year. Your bonus amortized monthly will be less than 1k post tax. 
 

this doesn’t apply to everyone obviously - not saying it’s a bad job or anything like that but it’s not for everyone. Look within. If you are what I think you are, you will be miserable in a year but for a different reason. 
 

what you need is a long vacation to rest and clear your head. Spend a week in Europe or Mexico and if after that, you still want to go down this path, then do it. 

How are you thinking about grinding it out and potentially retiring a lot earlier than if you took a huge comp hit for a more chill gig?

Less related to your job opportunities at hand, but more on the emotional side of things thought I would add here.

First of all, I feel you, and totally get what you're experiencing despite my situation being slightly different. I have been going the "high finance" route since undergrad and now sit at a top-tier MF as an associate. From the outside-in, it's the dream position - decent hours for MF PE (Still 9-10 M-F when no deal going on, but little weekend work), great comp, decent team, etc - but I still found myself sinking into the feelings you're describing. For me personally I had a really tough few months this spring and just realized how much of a toll the job was taking on my physically and mentally and wasn't sure if it was worth it to stick out the VP promotion (which I thought was doable, but unclear) or not.

Anyway - I'll share the strategy I'm taking with the major caveat that I am mid-way through and have absolutely no idea if it'll work.

My core "thesis" of my strategy was that I want to make sure I'm in the best headspace to consider my next steps, and that being burned-out will likely cause me to want to over-optimize for WLB and culture and under-optimize for things like upward mobility, comp, exits, and intellectual stimulation. I decided I needed to make first make the binary choice of staying (at least for one more year / bonus cycle) or not, then take some time to reset and more casually explore opportunities / learn about what is out there, and finally, only then, start to recruit once I feel more confident that I know exactly what I want to do and what is important to me. So far, I've already given my notice at my fund (partners / HR was surprisingly supportive) and have a few more months here ramping down. I've taken this time to really casually chat with people / friends in the industries I think would be interesting, ask openly about WLB and the pros and cons of their jobs etc, all outside of the pressure of actively recruiting. 

I've now given my notice about a month ago, and as the fog of burnout is slowly clearing I'm already seeing huge changes in what I'm targeting. One month ago, I would've told you WLB and culture are all that matters and I'm willing to take a 50% pay cut and go to a no-name, niche industry shop to get it. Now, I'm already seeing this shift where I'm being more honest with myself that comp and exit-opportunities are also important to me, and this shift in my thinking has made me really glad I didn't recruit (or take an offer I had on the table) right when I decided to quit and was still feeling burned out.

For me, I know I've taken a big risk by quitting with (purposefully) having nothing else lined up, and maybe it will be super hard for me to find something. And I should say, the fear / anxiety of having this period where I have no plan is really tough and exhausting. But I'm hopeful that the benefit of coming out of it finding the right place, and the confidence of knowing I took my time to be introspective to find it, is worth it.

I say all this that 1) your feelings and emotions are valid and I'm sorry you're experiencing them and 2) if you have the risk tolerance for it, you should consider giving yourself some time to decompress before rushing into anything else new - the emotions you're feeling now are also probably clouding your judgement. 

Go to one of those MMs that are trying to grow. Since they have lower prestige, they have to overpay to attract people in order to grow.

Therefore, you'll end up with lower hours due to lack of deal flow + chiller people, but you'll still be overpaid like crazy. You can also aim for FSG groups that don't do modelling/executing, so you can clip a few good cheques without doing much.

Just graduated college so take my advice with a grain of salt, but I’d argue what is most important is what you are passionate about—both professionally and beyond. If you love investing, executing deals, and monitoring portco operations (ie, you love PE, or at least like it more than any other option disregarding comp) then it probably makes sense to stick with your current role (although if you do, it sounds like you should be transparent with your team and let them know your headspace). If you’re passionate about building strong relationships with friends and family, participating in hobbies, being physically healthy, and so forth, then choose a job with favorable WLB. Moreover, assuming you have preferences (ideally passions) within the context of jobs/callings outside of PE, identify them and pursue them. It’s tempting to prioritize comp, but it even seems optimal from a comp perspective to pursue what you’re passionate about; in the long run it’s just likely to be something you’d devote time to and be good at. Unfortunately you can’t choose your passions, and identifying them can be hard, but it’s the most important thing.

Man, having broke/poor/loser parents must make life so stressful - you have to choose between a fulfilling and balanced life, or being rich but working all the time.

I haven’t posted in a while, but as someone who made the IB to Corp Dev jump and has been absolutely thrilled with the decision I had to offer some input. 

I did a couple of years as a post MBA associate and absolutely hated the grind of banking. Worse, I found the job itself incredibly boring, even at an EB doing mostly M&A. What I won’t discount though is that I learned a ton in those couple of years that I needed to be successful in Corp Dev.
 

I left that job right before the pandemic and joined a top acquirer in big tech (non-faang) and have never looked back. I immediately had incredible work life balance (50-60 hours per week max, with almost no weekend work unless it is the late stages of a deal), was a core member of a fairly small team that was doing some of the most visible strategic work for the company, and had teammates & leadership who genuinely cared about my well-being.

I ended up doing a bunch of deals there and leveraging that experience to join a late stage private company in a similar role and have moved up there as well. 
 

From a comp perspective, you’re going to eat a pretty sizable hit for the first few years, but many of the career corp dev people I know make a very good living (especially at the Director+ level) and have significant impact on overall company strategy. It’s a genuinely interesting job. I feel really lucky to have stumbled into this career and absolutely see it as a life-long one.

Here’s the caveat though - there are really only a handful of companies that have talented corp dev teams, good leadership buy-in, and the capital to execute meaningful transactions. If you’re thinking about corp dev as a career, it’s similar to banking in that you need to start in a place that has solid growth and good-to-exceptional deal flow so that you can learn the ins and outs of doing deals on the corporate side, or you could get stuck in a dead-end. Doing deals for an internal team is really different - it’s more about long-term strategy, process, building internal alignment, internal cross-functional management, etc than about being able to make nice decks and do really complex modeling, which are sort of just expected and not really a differentiated skill. 
I also see people on here saying if you go to corp dev you can never go back to PE or banking and I think that’s generally not true, assuming you go to a good corp dev team, execute deals, and show some career and skill progression. I pretty regularly get reached out to by recruiters for VC/growth stage PE.

I hope this has been helpful, even if a bit contrarian to what people have been saying on here. 
 

For whatever it's worth, I was similarly burnt out after 3 years of MM banking and 2 years of LMM PE. Left for a family office and personally love it. Long-term, would I make more money if I stayed at the PE firm I was at? Yes. Would I have hated my life as I continually worked the crazy hours required to keep getting promoted? Also, yes. Now I work 9-5 and during the summer when the majority of the family office world is off sailing the Mediterranean or galivanting around Europe, I barely work half of that. Now I have actual time in my life to be with my wife, workout, walk the dogs, golf, vacation with family, go out with friends, etc. without being constantly stressed out and bringing my laptop everywhere because I likely will need to stop what I am doing and work. Currently, I make ~$225k in cash with mid-single-digits points of carry on a deal by deal basis in a location with no state income tax, with room for growth / promotion and further exposure to the upside (older partners phasing out who have most of the carry allocations). For me that was the same cash comp I was getting at my hardo LMM PE firm as an associate with the addition of carry (would have need to waited for promotion to VP to get that at the PE gig).

At the end of the day, it depends what you want out of life. For some people, they love the chase of a deal and are all about maximizing every penny of their comp and base their career decisions off that. If that makes you happy, go for it. Personally, I don't "live to work", so taking that route would make me miserable (as I was all of my sweaty banking and PE stints). I have gotten the "aren't you bored?" question from old colleagues that are still running the PE / IB rat race which always makes me laugh. Having free time for hobbies and spending time with family and friends is not boring for me, but I understand that for some people they love the job / deals so doing anything but working all the time is boring / seems too slow-paced. To each their own, depends on what makes you happy in life. I worked for a really smart MD in his mid-30s at my PE gig. MF background guy who was really sharp, but as I worked with him and saw how he lived his life, I knew personally that would make me miserable. Always a slave to the deal, constantly working, barely spending time with his wife, working most of his vacations, etc. I remember one Christmas party where his wife got drunk and confided in my significant other while crying and talking about how much he works and she never spends time with him. I personally just had no interest in that life, even if it means an opportunity for more pay (personally I don't that incremental more of money to live my life comfortably and be happy).

I was doing the same calculus you were doing when I was contemplating leaving my PE gig in terms of am I giving up mega-millions in potential carry if I am able to keep getting promoted? Will I even be able to keep getting promoted? Will I need to recruit elsewhere to do so? For me, it wasn't worth hating my life and my current gig gives me enough participation in the upside that I have the opportunity for some chunky liquidity events just not at the same level as PE would allow given we aren't deploying as much capital (for example, someone at my firm that has the same amount of carry points that I do got a 7 figure carry payout on our last exit).

Saw this post on LinkedIn and I had to make a profile to chime in. 

I joined a startup as the inaugural “strategic finance / corp dev” hire. I’ve closed $12B in transactions in 12 months without an IB (just me, counsel, and select C-Suite), including two deals that set the global records for scale & emerging structure. I cleared the salary equivalent of a VP at an EB in cash comp first year. ISOs and RSUs now worth more than I’d make in 15 years with carry at a megafund and I’ve got liquidity way faster. 

I work round the clock with a limited staff. W/L has been effectively in line with banking/PE. But I own a portion of the Company. Leaders (VP-C-Suite) at major “Magnificent 7” firms and global F500s know me on a first name basis. I get asked to speak at fireside chats at conferences for these IBs. I now work closely with the top IB ECM/LevFin and M&A desks on the street, and have very close relationships with some of the world’s leading funds. So close that I’m hiring directly from their teams. I’ve got a nonstop flood of talent looking to join my team from BBs + EBs and megafunds. I set my own hours and have built a team with autonomy from scratch. 

I see posts like this and I’m reminded of myself as a young man just a couple short years ago - obsessively and myopically focused on prestige and comp. 

I yearned to go on trips w my wife and friends, go out like a “regular” person, to have some semblance of W/L balance. I was burnt out to the brim - had no protected 9p Fri - 9a Sunday windows. I just drowned for years. I let my hair fall out and lost hobbies and friends and memories.

I justified it all with some sense of superiority - the trade off was worth it, I rationalized, because I was in the room with execs and making $300-400k+ two years out of college. I had this misplaced “don’t you know who I am?” sense of self worth entirely derived from the illusion of prestige that existed only in my small circle of professionals. I thought I was finally “in” on it, and if I just held out a little longer, life would get better and I’d be disgustingly rich and all my friends posting their Europe vacations would look on my success & triumph with envy. 

Little did I realize that no one - genuinely no one - outside of my professional circle gave a shit that I was “a banker,” with the exception of my parents who were proud and my wife who humored my ego. It was a crushing realization, coupled with years of toiling and burnout.

I finally crashed out and jumped ship to pursue a life I assumed would be way more fulfilling. I had mixed emotions at first, though. I was crushed for the first 3 months with this sense of dread - I read through volumes of WSO, Reddit, Fishbowl posts from people cautioning that my path to prestige was fundamentally over. I had cashed out and lost my shot at the big leagues - I was destined for a life of obscurity, buried in corporate America’s mediocrity. I started to panic that I’d made the wrong decision - not a product of my team, or the work, or the Company, but rather the Stockholm syndrome of IB/PE and this creeping paranoia that I’d made a permanent decision in haste, and forever threw away the optionality to return. 

Luckily, none of that was true. Unluckily, my work life balance went right back to IB hours. BUT, I was in the room making direct decisions on billions of dollars. Not SUGGESTIONS, but genuine decisions. I got handed outsized responsibility and opportunity bc I showed up in a corporate setting and continued with the IB work ethic I’d refined over the years. I treated everything with the same level of perfectionism and passionate competitiveness that I had before. The founders and C-suite genuinely looked to me for advice, connections, and execution. My stock comp alone has fundamentally and permanently changed my life; my team, leaders, c-suite are genuinely like family to me (not in the cliche corporate sense, but in the invite-them-to-my-wedding sense). 

I only give this context because precedent matters. As bankers and financiers and investors, we’re all way too often blinded by a need to be “in control.” We demand optionality and we simultaneously over-engineer every decision around a narrow and obsessive imaginary future we’ve crafted for ourselves. We’ll do the diligence and obsess over the pros and cons - but sometimes man, you’ve just got to pull the trigger.

You’re not going to have all the answers at this stage of your life. You may genuinely NOT know what you want - there’s a risk that a jump to corp dev could materialize as a boring, stifling experience for you. There’s a chance that PE could lead to riches and (professional) fame and glory. BUT, there’s a chance you could do something wildly special on a corp dev team and make headlines in WSJ and score enough stock to buy a few houses in the Hamptons. There’s a chance PE will burn you to the ground and you’ll only realize it at the finish line, looking back at a life wasted on zoom calls and in excel sheets for a modest apartment in the UWS and a spouse that resents you. There’s a chance the entire world goes up in smoke from our AI overlords and global geopolitical strife, and you spent your last years reading the opinions of strangers on a banking forum. 

I’m rambling, but the point is - live your life. Everyone here has a unique path they've taken to get precisely where they are. People can only offer you anecdotes and brief little windows into THEIR experiences. Ignore the people that talk in  absolutes. You’re not MARRIED to any choice - I’ve had two IBs and a major fund ask me if I’d think about joining after exit @ my current company. I’ve seen people maneuver in the craziest ways professionally (IR > PE, PE > IB > PE, MM IB > Megafund PE, Corp Dev > Ventures, IB > CD > IB again, Corp Dev to founders).

No experience is the same. Mine, especially, is a weird outlier. But I’m seeing more and more outliers the longer I’m in the industry. Everyone on this site can give you their stories, but you gotta follow your own path. Don’t let these comments panic you or motivate you too much in any direction.

This is your ONE life on earth (depending on your belief system). You have to make decisions. Get comfortable knowing that you not only CAN fail, but WILL fail. And know that you’ll succeed - but don’t let the success blind you. Fear of uncertainty is a human constant. You already know what you like/don’t like about PE. Let yourself cool off. Really identifu what you think is missing from your life, what you’re willing to trade for it, and will make you happy. And the dope part is that you may not have ANY answer to those questions. Or your answer TODAY might be totally different than 5 years from now; it will almost CERTAINLY be different in 20 years from now. 

So take the chance if you’re feeling stifled and in need of a change once you’ve cooled off. Don’t feel like you’re making a decision for eternity - there are plenty of ways to maneuver into/out of ANY of these fields in the future. Stay focused on (1) working like a banker no matter your role, (2) remaining humble and curious, (3) remaining honest w yourself and w others, and life will work out. You’ll figure it out - all the stuff you like and don’t like - over time, but don’t let fear or uncertainty stop you from taking chances and living life. And certainly don’t make decisions entirely on the advice of nameless strangers on the internet (including this post, fwiw).

Good luck, you’ll figure it out & crush it at whatever you choose to do

The key questions are if you’re good at what you do, if your firm is good at what they do, and if you think there’s a long term path there for you.

You say you love money and (from your post) sounds like you hate the hours.

When you’re a partner at your firm you’ll make >10x what you make now and you’ll work half the hours you work now. So on a $ per effort basis, it’s a 20x better reality.

The question is if you have what it takes to get there? Because you’ll need stamina and will need to reinvent yourself professionally a few times.

A lot of people think they can do it, but they end up getting burned out, toxically cynical and jaded, or neglected their health and relationships to a point where they are physically or emotionally failing.

If you think you can keep at it while keeping your head screwed on straight and repeatedly differentiate vs your peers all the while, then go for it.

If not, pull the rip chord and get out now. The worst of all choices is to double down, burn up valuable years of your life and forgo options that would advance you towards a worthy end only to bail down the line when your stock has fallen and you’re down on your like and mired in the stink of failure.

As someone who joined a CorpDev team that was all ex-Bankers. The hours was suspiciously like IBD hours with none of the pay or fringe benefits. Just some food for thought. 

I am one of the posters above. Lot of good feedback and anecdotes have been shared on this thread. The one thing I want to point out - and this is with respect to the monetary side of the equation - is that the success stories mentioned above involve equity risk. People that go the corporate route that end up with a comparable financial outcome in most cases are joining tech start ups, and either have start up equity or have equity in a larger, more mature business, but one that is growing very fast. Without equity or high growth, your upside is limited. The point is you’re talking about joining an auto parts business as corp dev. That’s just not it. The corporate opportunity I considered many years ago was a F50 that was a household name but basically grew in line with the s&p. The type of role where you’re truly a cog in a big corporate machine. That is very different than if you were strategic finance hire number 1 at DoorDash. 
 

There is no free lunch. If you want financial upside, you have to have some combo of hard work, risk and equity that can substantially increase in value. 
 

The most successful person, by financial measures, from my analyst class was an early exec at a fairly successful tech start up. His NW is multiples of anyone, including the tail outcomes, that went the PE/HF route. 
 

What’s NaN?

Do the FAANG role. 

I'm thinking very similarly to you after having had a brutal 3 years at a BB that really destroyed me and a year in a good fund.

The number 1 thing to ask yourself from my point of view on the question of "grinding through the junior years" is to look at your VPs and Partners.

Do they have the WLB you wanna have in your 30/40s. Do you want their hours / stress when having kids and trying to build a life.

If yes, stay. If no, you have the answer! I'm sure you know how it is at your shop, but the partners in my firm have an insane amount of pressure to keep finding new deals and make sure what they sold to the IC doesnt blow up. When reflecting on this, it made me really question my own future in investing.

EDIT:

An important thing that I observed is that I get along by far the best with the operating partners at our fund. Some of them used to be head of m&a at large cap companies, some former CTOs, etc. and I find their role super interesting as it's a key part of the fund's value proposition

From my point of view, they seem to have the best combo of WLB, impact and decision making. Sure they won't be IC members but unless you aim this high, it can be a great gig. Essentially they get to give their input on strategy, bolt-ons, sourcing new deals without any of the admin, IC rush, or other nitty gritty details

If you take the strategy role, there can be a good chance for you to come back as an operating partner later down the line!

Late to this thread but wanted to chime in due to a positive experience.

I similarly did BB IB then UMM PE. Left during my second year as an associate.

I was pretty unhappy but planned on finishing my two years, then leaving. Was evaluating BSchool, PortCo, or other work. The main reason I knew I wanted to leave is I didn't want the lives my VPs had. Sure, they were pulling a ton of money, but they were still working 60+ hours a week and trying to raise a family. They'd be running out of the office so they could make it home before the nanny left, just to eat dinner and log back on. Seemed like a never ending cycle of brutal WLB, and that was just for the lucky ones that made VP.

Realizing that wasn't for me, and I didn't care enough about comp / prestige to want that, I spent a lot of time figuring out what I did want (talking 3-6 months). I identified a few select industries I felt passionate about, and started opportunistically looking for roles only in those industries. Really only got a few offers as I wasn't applying a ton of places.

But, I did get one in the niche industry I was most passionate about. I'm doing Corp Dev now. I'll certainly agree that there can be a lot of negative aspects of the job. We did one large deal about 6 months ago, and have since turned off M&A. This means I'm doing a lot of the 'strategy' work that folks above speak negatively about. I'd agree it's less interesting than deal work, but given it's in the industry I do care about, I find it interesting and useful as I'm becoming more of an industry expert. I think that's what keeps me excited on the 'boring' days. 

Yes, I do have great WLB and slow days. Someone above mentioned how 'getting bored' will happen. Sure it does, but I've filled that up with hobbies, planning trips with SO / college buddies, more reading (yes and video games), more exercise, more golf, coaching youth sports, etc. If you don't have hobbies or would rather work and earn extra $, then that's an important consideration. I'd certainly wish to work 10% more for 10% more pay, but it's really hard to perfectly nail that balance.

Long post, but the main point is try to identify what excites you. If it's purely the thrill of the deal and maxing out comp, then maybe try to tough out PE. If you are starting to realize the diminishing returns of the comp (at least, how I felt) try to figure out what you are good at and what excites you, because being able to find a job that marries both those points will increase the likelihood of you liking it. If you aren't passionate about auto / mobility, don't take that role. Sounds like you want the FAANG role - I'd map out why, as a way to double check, but I'd focus more on industry / what drives you than the specific comp / day to day (unless that is what drives you). Hard to make that decision for you, but try to figure out where you'd like to be in the long run (whether industry or role), and work back from there.

For me, I knew that wasn't PE, so haven't regret leaving at all.