Getting into PE skipping IB

I partially agree with this conventional view, but also disagree for a couple of reasons.

Depending on the bank you're working at, you may or may not get the great "training" everyone lauds on this forum. If you're at PJT / Moelis / Lazard / other top EB analyst program with a heavy technical focus and ample opportunities to build modeling skills, where you're doing complex advisory work (meaning really getting creative on capital structure, doing complex cross-border M&A transactions, transactions with public companies, etc.), then yeah you will get a great technical foundation, have a valuable analyst network that you can leverage later in your career, and will likely end up at a great fund.

If you go to a MM or a coverage group at a BB with limited modeling exposure, your experience will be dramatically different. Especially in the middle market, you're often working on sponsor to sponsor transactions, where companies have simple cap structures and often do not require thoughtful analyses at the analyst level. Getting these deals done is more about telling the "story," and building out a CIM that is digestible and creates a compelling growth story for a MM sponsor to invest behind. Consequently, you'll be doing a ton of PowerPoint work, formatting, etc., which I didn't find useful at all beyond developing a baseline understanding of creating PowerPoints (e.g., footnotes should not jump from page to page, always use "reading mode" to check page formatting, alt j p i s to make logo backgrounds transparent...and so forth)

If you find yourself in one of these groups, sure, you're doing 50+ projects during your stint, but how much of that work is additive to the investor skillset? I worked at a MM and a lot of my work was not valuable - buyer trackers, refreshing pitch templates, comps, and a long list of other mundane tasks done late into the night. This was not a shit bank either, and I had friends at top MMs like Blair, Baird, and certain BBs complaining about the same issues, so I doubt this issue is solely unique to my bank.

As a PE analyst, you'll presumably be supporting the associate who's building the model, creating pages for IC memos, leading / supporting expert calls and diligence calls with the sell-side and management teams, working on portco initiatives, and other DD work that requires actual critical thinking. Imo building these skills early on is more valuable to the investing skillset than a lot of the workstreams you can get stuck with in banking.

OP - one important thing to clarify is whether or not you'll be doing sourcing as part of the role. Some analyst programs are heavily focused on sourcing - this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as finance is often a sales game esp as you climb the ranks. However, it's a different skillset and ideally you want to have a clear understanding of the day-to-day given the unstructured nature of many PE analyst programs.