Burn Out in PE - What Comes Next?
This community has helped me a ton in breaking into the industry. Currently trying to get some honest thoughts from those who may have gone through this. Did the standard 2+2 path, good analyst program to MF / UMM PE associate program. Have seen similar threads in the past on burn out and feeling drained emotionally and physically, and knew all of these things were part of the PE experience but its really hitting now after being in the job for over a year. My social life is pretty dead and physically exhausted from the hours and being constantly on. Find it super hard to carve out time as the job creates a lot of stress and deadlines. For those that found yourself in this depressed state towards the end of your PE stint or mid way through, what did you find helpful? I know many will say finding time to go to the gym or looking forward to business school but wondering if there’s anything else that helps
It really depends on if you’re done with finance or if you still like the job but you’re just tired.
If you’re done with finance, embrace that you’re done. Start looking for corp dev / strat / FP&A roles. Network with ex IB / PE guys in corporate. The exact role doesn’t matter that much because in corporate everyone ends up a generalist and movement across job functions is very easy. I would focus primarily on working for good quality people who you respect personally and professionally and working in a setting that you want (remote vs in person). Working with good humans is very good for your soul.
If you’re just tired but still want to do PE. Either 1) ask to work for your firm’s portcos as a chief of staff (so you don’t have to do any real work) for 1 year and ask to get 1-2 months off before starting and take a trip where you do something physical (Dolomites, Nepal, Patagonia, etc) or 2) quit and just take a sabbatical for a few months. Either way, start networking immediately once you’re back from your time off and be explicit with head hunters and firms you’re networking with that you want to get back to PE. You can not take off more than 2-3 months, if you wait 1+ year in a different job function you will not be able to get back to PE in the current market.
In either case, you need to 1) stop drinking entirely, 2) start exercising aggressively, 3) clean up your diet, 4) sleep as much as possible, 5) start investing in your life outside of work (literally just make weekend plans to go do something small as a starting point, plan a trip to visit a friend in another city), 6) go to therapy. The last one gets clowned on a lot on this forum, but you need an outlet to let out the pent up emotions you’re feeling and process everything that comes with burning out of a career you invested so much emotional energy into. If you don’t, you’ll start dumping all this emotional baggage on your significant other, friends, family and that will single-handedly destroy all of your relationships. People don’t know how to handle extreme anxiety and emotions and you will push people away.
Bumping as in a similar boat (Analyst/Associate at BB, moved to PE and done with it). Have actively been applying to non-finance roles (strategic finance, strategy, corp dev) through LinkedIn jobs and have literally only received rejections so far. Didn’t expect it to be easy but also expected it to be less competitive than finance recruiting, and figured my CV would at least land some first round interviews… guess not lol. For context, these are not roles in super niche sectors and the JD calls for my IB/PE YoE, so the 0% hit rate is depressing
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