Getting a sense of WLB at PE firms?
Anyone have tips on this without just directly asking an associate? Feels like a bad move in an interview process (even though it’s a perfectly reasonable request) and I don’t want to commit a bunch of time to an interview only to find out the place is a sweat shop. Also, know plenty of people who will say they have a decent lifestyle on a networking call because they’re scared to admit the truth
There’s decent intel on here but outside of some notorious sweat shops or huge MFs, there is either limited data due to class size or flat out wrong info (I’ve seen highly upvoted posts on here calling somewhere a lifestyle shop where I know for a fact is a massive sweat shop, and the opposite case as well).
I know you can look at deals per year / junior headcount, but I feel like this misses the worst type of offender here which are firms that run hard at everything and either don’t bid or don’t win (which is the worst thing to do as a junior). Also misses things like shops that have a sourcing expectation and the like.
Ask people what they like to do for fun on weekends
If guys say they do sports leagues, travel on weekends, time consuming things like hiking, or just generally have an answer for you about a life outside of work... that's a good sign. If the associate sighs and says "well I don't get much free time around here, but I like to do [insert very short activity] when I get the time"
Yeah sometimes you'll find the guy who is boring regardless of hours, or someone who does ultra-marathons while working terrible hours at APO, but if you ask this throughout the interview process you can get a good idea of how people view their free time just from how they talk about it
This is a really good idea.
If it's a structured associate program, I wouldn't hesitate to ask a firm if you could speak with former associates and frame it as wanting to hear from someone that fully went through the program. They probably won't bad mouth the firm as a direct reference, but are usually more forthcoming and have gotten more direct answers in terms of hours/weekend work.
You can also reach out to former associates via LinkedIn - there's a chance that it eventually gets back to the firm that you're asking around, but I've rarely heard of negative consequences from this (and have done this myself several times).
If you have a decent network in IB and think there may be overlap between what this PE firm focuses on and your IB network, perhaps try asking around to see how they behave in processes.
Really easy to find an ex-employee with LinkedIn these days. If you get down to being serious about a firm, you need to call people who left and find out why.
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