Laid Off From Toxic Job
Was laid off today after 8 months on the job at an UMM fund and am feeling defeated. I’ve worked my butt off the last 7 years to get to where I am today and would appreciate anyones advice as I’m at a bit of an impasse in my career.
The job itself was by far the best learning experience of my career due to all of the exposure I got however, the work environment was incredibly toxic. What I think ultimately went wrong was that I was asked to perform my job at a level that far exceeded my experience level and received no grace despite being an entry level hire. Ideally, I would like to stick it out in finance and continue to be in PE but am worried that I won’t be able to find a situation that will allow me to continue to build up my fundamental skills before throwing the kitchen sink at me. I’m leaps and bounds ahead of where I was 8 months ago but still need to make some inroads in terms of adjusting to the pace at which everything is done at.
Background:
Graduated in 2019 from a Big 12 School studying Economics (Cincinnati/Houston)
Graduated in 2022 from a MiM at a Semi Target (Cornell/Northwestern)
2 years in Technical Sales Role @ Tech Company
1 year @ Tech focused Boutique PE Firm
8 months @ Tech Focused UMM PE Firm
Firms Culture:
I chose to join an UMM PE firm out of my masters program over several other offers at other funds due to the firms strong training program and my interactions with the investment professionals throughout the interview process (7 rounds of interviews over 2-3 months + final round coffee chat with partners). Given how much I had gotten to know the members of the investment team throughout the process I felt as though culturally I’d found more or less the perfect fit.
Once, I started though things took a turn pretty quickly for the worse. The training program they had promised to put the analysts through was cancelled with no explanation and the culture shifted rapidly for the worst. That led me to being thrown into the fire on my second day before I could even complete all of my onboarding tasks. To make matters worse I was the only other person on the deal with the partner and had no support internally.
While I was comfortable performing the more qualitative aspects of the job I struggled with the technical parts of the deal given I never did banking. So when I went to ask my partner a few questions related to the deal after I had sat with the problem for a while (made sure I couldn’t find answers using internal resources or the internet) and walked him through my thought process his response surprised me. He told me “get the fuck out of his office and to never ask him any questions again.” After that encounter I shook it off thinking he was just in a bad mood and was ultimately able to figure the problem out but it took some time. That really irked him so he then proceeded to berate and shame me in front of the entire office while threatening to cut my bonus. This experience was pretty consistent with the rest of my time at the firm and after a while I just got used to it. Throughout this all I managed to maintain a good attitude, said yes to whatever was asked of me, and offered to do additional work when I had capacity to do so.
In an effort to move past those early issues, accelerate my learning curve, and show the firm how committed I was I made an effort to go overboard with everything I did. I was always the first person in and last one out of the office (even worked weekends when not required) . I also invested in Wall Street Prep, read textbooks on LBO’s, would do an internal memo of key events impacting our portfolio and overall market commentary for our weekly discussions, and would build out full models from scratch in my free time to improve my speed. After a few months of doing this I really started to see drastic and measurable improvements. Unfortunately, these improvements were never good enough for my partner who chose to fixate on my early struggles rather than acknowledge any progress I made. So when I found out today I was being laid off it didn’t come as a complete surprise but it didn’t make it any less frustrating.
Specific Ex’s About Boss (there are about a 12-18 more of these):
Found out at an offsite that his last analyst who came from banking quit 3 months in because he couldn’t handle him
Performance reviews (whenever he’d flip out at me he was clearly trying to get a reaction out of me and when I wouldn’t give it to him and politely answer back he used it as a chance to say that I’m not passionate about the job in my review)
Got into a serious accident that left me in bad shape physically and covered for him on a deal (skipped going to the doctor right away to cover for him in the office while concussed, bleeding, and with broken bones). Never asked me if I was okay afterward or said thank you.
Bad mouthed me internally (got good feedback on several projects I did for another partner and once he found out about it passed it off as his own work and told that partner that I’m a headache he doesn’t want a part of)
Emotionally abusive towards wife in front of me (on multiple occasions would tell his wife he had no problem leaving her and their kids and without him they’d be nothing)
To be honest, if you have 20 months of PE experience and you aren’t able to complete work quickly, I would start figuring out what your skill set better fits.
Also, as a side note, it sounds like you are complaining. Instead of asking for next steps, you spent a lot of time on a diatribe that no one really cares about. I would just focus on how to move on and landing on your feet.
Why do people feel the need to be dicks without even answering/providing what op asked. I hate humans at times.
Appreciate your feedback and should have been clearer.
What I was trying to communicate was that compared to my peers I struggle with the execution part of the job (building models and data entry) but am much better at critical thinking (analysis of those models, reading the tea leaves in the market, subsequent investment strategy, and crafting ideas). I’ve done a fair amount of research but am still unsure which areas of finance values that skillset. At the senior levels that skill set seems more prevalent but at the entry and mid levels the opposite is most prevalent. Does anyone know of any career paths within the industry that values that kind of skill set?
I should have clarified that I did strategy work for the boutique PE firm so I had no modeling or transaction experience prior to entering the industry. I was open with firms about this during the interview process and knowing that asked for pre work from employees who said that it wasn’t necessary due to the training program they had in place (subsequently cancelled). So when I got thrown on a live deal with no support right off the bat and no training I was surprised by the partners attitude given the firm knew all of this about me before they hired me.
In my 8 months on the job I cut my time down building models from scratch from 4 hours to 2 (5 years of annuals and quarters with segment data, KPI’s, 3 statements, etc. and trends with analysis). At first I could see how 4 hours for that task is a little long but doing all that in 2 seems reasonable. I don’t have any frame of reference point here other than my own. Would you agree? Disagree?
"What I was trying to communicate was that compared to my peers I struggle with the execution part of the job (building models and data entry) but am much better at critical thinking (analysis of those models, reading the tea leaves in the market, subsequent investment strategy, and crafting ideas)..."
lol.
you have the wrong expectation of the job. your title is what, associate? if you can't execute, you were fired for being incompetent.
You sound like a loser just trying to let it out when you can be anonymous
I would ignore a lot of the negative comments on here and sympathize with your experience. The job is a grind even if you have training from a banking program, so not even having training is a tough place to start. Moreover, it should be a mentorship program where your boss wants you to get better so the better you get, the easier you make his life, particularly on the back end.
Take the feedback from him here to improve your technical skills on your own, whether that’s building your own models in your free time, etc. but I would honestly leave after you get traction in recruiting. Speaking from experience, as I’ve had a terrible luck with culture, the last thing you want is to recruit and find another job with a similar boss which unfortunately permeates most of PE (and hence why most juniors quit after Associate program…).