Hi everyone! I am a current college freshman and I am thinking about the investment banking-private equity pathway. How hard is it to reach managing director at a private equity firm like blackstone? How about principal director? How often do people get fired in private equity? Thanks!
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Hi, welcome to WSO. I'm a Prospect in IB-M&A and I have the full knowledge and expertise to answer your question.
It's really easy. Yr wlcome.
Edit: extremely hard. Removed so I’ll stop getting MS from people who aren’t even contributing to the response/telling me what to edit to make it better.
i can't believe you wrote this all out bro it's so easy to be an MD at bx
Honestly it's my ADHD - I started typing and got so focused that I couldn't stop until it was done
Are you being serious?
Are you off the addy?
Unfortunately yeah, I’m taking a break for now because I was having some serious issues with it. It’s a game changer for ADHD though - I never spent half an hour typing up responses on WSO when I was on it lol
A lot of this is true and a lot of it isn’t. By no means is any bank going to fire you if you’re not top bucket and even at bottom bucket the odds are low. Also, you get your PE offer less than a few month into banking in Normal years (not this year since Covid delayed recruiting) and as long as you don’t get fired no firm is checking in on you to see what bucket you’re in. It’s just like the internship return offer. As long as you graduate and hit the minimum gpa no bank gives a s*** what you do senior year
Everything post PE associate you said is mostly correct but your pre-associate is a lot darker than it really is
Not in banking per se, in repe instead, but my manager was let go, despite being what I thought was a really good performer overall. They were kind of a bitch but I know I don’t have to like everyone, so it came as a surprise to me.
Edit: extremely hard. You can always be fired at any time, especially when you’re getting close to the top.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful response. How about rising to a similar rank for hedge fund?
50 hours a week in mm pe is likely a pipe dream especially in nyc. When you’re on a live deal it’s the same regardless of fund size too so you may have 50-60 hour weeks but you will also have 70-80-90 hour weeks in there as well. It’s still a deal business.
Bro you still got 3 bananas though. Why would you take it down?
Most folks can make it to PE VP by grinding it out. Because so much of the work up until that point is process oriented, you only need a threshold IQ that you presumably have if you make it through the recruiting filters. However once you reach VP it becomes evident whether you have "it", and you can't continue climbing by simply outworking your peers. At the Principal level, it's all about whether you can generate actionable (good) investments for the firm. The more senior you are, the more you're betting on yourself.
At the principal level and beyond generating the actionable investments comes from sourcing good opportunities/deals via one's network right?
That’s right to a degree. At a place like BX, most of your targets will be banked or your competitors will also be calling on the same companies, so you aren’t really leveraging your network to drum up proprietary deals. Everyone is talking to the same bankers and industry insiders. It is more about using your network to have a stay fresh / have a creative POV.
How do you know if you will have the "It".
If you have to ask...
Not as hard as senior managing director ;)
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