Every now and then, someone will make a rant about how toxic IB / PE is, this is one of them

I’d like to add one more thing: lateraling after finding yourself in a toxic shithole is NOT that easy. Good bosses rarely have people leave, so spaces with good bosses are… not frequently available.

Unfortunately, people who have spent all / most of their career under a good boss often don’t get this, and when it’s their turn to hire, they have a bitch fit about people jumping “too much”. This can be particularly bad in firms / locations with Asian cultures (and in my limited experience, French) because they’re hierarchical af and it’s taboo to indicate that your previous firms were anything but amazing.

Before anyone says that I’m the problem, I’d like to point out that:

• I’ve gotten glowing references from 1 or more senior person from every firm bar the last
• My immediate seniors in every firm bar the last have generally been extremely upset when I left.
• At every firm, I’ve gotten counteroffers to stay and / or job opportunities from ex-bosses and colleagues before the market went south
• I had multiple offers to join a BB (didn’t want to go back into IBD) or better established, better paying PE firms. I’m the schmuck who gets taken in by all the talk about “entrepreneurship” and “rocket ship” and “faster progression”. Yes, my past career choices were idiotic.

So, here’s how bad luck can really roll 5 times in a roll:

1. Non-IB, front office finance role in a BB:
   • Notorious for having high junior turnover – 90% of the analyst class leaves in <2 years, and not to buyside / MBA. Most people just ran to a competitor.
   • All manner of terrible mistakes regularly occurred and the only reason why it’s still running is because it’s super established, in an industry where legacy relationships really matter.
   • Competency was not required for promotion at all, so many senior people regularly made serious mistakes and tried to pin it on a junior. Occasionally compliance / a head would have enough – a head once screamed at my entire team for causing a major, preventable fuck up for the third time, and then trying to blame me (the most junior person). But there were no consequences for them and his outburst only made them angrier at me for being publicly vindicated at their expense.
   • When I resigned, various senior people were pulling me aside to either (1) offer me a role in a different team; (2) telling me that they hated my team and were glad I left; (3) telling me that my team’s manager had been trying to make a case to PIP me (in order to blame me for his poor performance), only to have HR inform him that I was performing better than other analysts
   • I later heard that for at least the 3 years after I left, they had a new analyst every year… so that makes 11 analysts in 11 years
2. IB – local / regional boutique:
   • Comparatively meh except for slightly less extreme favouritism, and oh, some sexual harassment from not only a director, but another analyst (why?). Everyone knew, and no one did anything.
   • Said director also actively tried to block my progression and would often credit my work to his (male, nepo baby) favourite, who could not insert a row into excel properly without help. He got canned after I left.
3. IB – global boutique:
   • Insane amounts of infighting amongst a useless middle mgmt team, with angry VPs calling me (an analyst / senior analyst) to rant about other VPs and request that I get them to cooperate (ha. ha. ha.)
   • Useless EDs / MDs = tons of pitching and 100 hr weeks only to be ghosted = shit bonus
   • Perhaps realising that they sucked, they made it extremely hard to leave legally (and therefore hard to recruit out) – AFAIK, only my office did this. Someone else swore that their wife had threatened suicide in order to leave fuss-free
4. PE – global, non-MF type (AUM >>>$100bn):
   • More competent bosses, some were ex-MF and actually had business acumen. However, said business acumen apparently also meant that they deliberately undervalued the team below them
   • My MD told us, verbatim: “I love that I got all of you at a massive discount, because you were all fleeing toxic environments. That’s how I get good people for less”. Good people that worked 130-140hr work weeks, at a discount.
   • Only promised fair comp & progression once I resigned
5. PE – global, non-MF type (Fund AUM >$20bn):
   • Where do I even begin? I’m pretty sure none of their investments are going to end well, with their habit of overpaying and inability to make exits
   • It’s bad when you still have higher-than-industry turnover in 2023 / 2024 and LPs ask leavers if so & so has driven out yet another person
   • Promoting only favourites who, surprise, cannot comprehend basic corporate finance, let alone model, or understand how a process works
   • Which gets you fun surprises like a key portco’s IRR skydiving when someone else finally realises cashflows weren’t modelled correctly
   • ...and law partners calling you begging you to help change your senior’s mind over a retarded decision that does indeed bite us in the ass later
   • ...and Principals who don’t understand how a business works (we’re a specialist FFS)
   • After I refused to cancel a medically necessary surgery (with several weeks of downtime), they suddenly claimed I was a poor performer (despite above average to average ratings in prior reviews & promise of promotion), but were unable to produce a shred of evidence… (in fairness, I was so done by then that I’d openly announced several times that I was planning to leave, accused several seniors of favouritism and incompetence in the “anonymous” employee review, and was openly grumpy in the office, so perhaps this was the last straw for them)
   • Employment is at-will where I am, and you cannot sue for any reason at all. However, they still felt the need to tie my last bonus to an NDA requesting that I never even speak of my interactions with anyone at the firm (I may have threatened HR with anecdotes of incompetence that I witnessed)
   • No regrets for my actions; everyone who remained is telling me that they’re miserable and that the new hires are also miserable (newbies are apparently leaving in their first month, having break downs in the office, reneging on their acceptance of job offers)