Life as IB Analyst vs. PE Associate
It's been widely discussed on this forum of how the PE Associate gig could be even more sweatier than IB with higher stress and a lot of grunt work as the most junior.
How has life changed? As an IB analyst, feel like you are always on call but there is relatively a lot of downtime when waiting for comments. In PE, is there simply more work to be done? And is everything also expected to be done ASAP like in banking or is there more leeway to when you want to do your work over the weekend?
The job could be more bearable if you feel more ownership over your work product. Does it get better on the other side?
Have done both and PE associate is much worse in my experience. Work is way harder - you will actually have to think, which you might consider a good thing, but when you are running on consistent 2-3 hours of sleep, this is terrible. The work consists of modeling + deck creation, and never ending streams of admin work that continue to pile up. You constantly feel like you are drowning and cannot catch up. The culture is way less “we’re in it together” / “me and the boys” and way more cutthroat as everyone is competing for the same seats and carry dollars. Pay is worse too on a cash basis when compared to staying in banking. Carry is a myth - no one at my fund below partner that I have talked to has seen a single carry payout lmao (NYC MF). Control over your time is non existent and maybe the worst part of the job. I have cancelled multiple vacations, dates, and trips because random shit has blown up. Truly an awful job. Stay in banking
this is more on the extreme end, but yeah he pretty much nails it on the head in my experience (Non-NYC MM). Luckily have had a bit better luck on the vacations/trips part. But I don't even bother trying to schedule dates during the week due to this job.
would you say more control over your time than banking? live deals could always blow up but you could also have a super easy week in banking and get a friday afternoon staffing that requires work all weekend on a meaningless pitch that is terrible for your social life
what has the experience been generally?
Where are you working that are you sleeping 2-3 hours a week? That is horrendous
What do you plan to do?
Agreed. NYC MM/LMM here - would likely have stayed in IB if not for headcount issues in my old group. Planning to stick to PE through a Sr Asso / VP and then likely pivot back to IB or Corp dev unless I find a firm with fantastic culture
very different than my friends in Europe based NYC MF... got to travel basically every other month and every long weekend, with one month off in summer and over xmas new years
I would give an opposite perspective to the one above. NYC MF PE (growth focus) and BB IB. Overall experience was a lot more enjoyable that banking. Found the work to be much more interesting and while it’s draining to use your brain, I found it to be a lot less of a slog/depressing than banking. I really hated the repetitiveness/grunt work/always on call nature of banking. PE felt less repetitive and had more exciting scenarios where you’re trying to make deals and meeting interesting management teams. I think it boils down to IB being client facing (so you’re just a slave to your MD who is a slave to the client) while in PE you’re in the driver seat.
One other note - I felt like in PE you got to focused on what mattered. I like working on models, doing analysis, and crafting a deal these. Versus in banking you’re doing 100 iterations of a pitch deck you’ll never win, having your VP nit pick over what adjustment you’re making on a comps slide, formatting shit, etc. You also have lawyers, accountants, consultants, etc. in PE that do their work for you, while in banking I remember having to waste time on things like editing NDAs to send to clients to sign.
Also there was a huge difference in the people/culture for me. In BB IB everyone knows you’re leaving after 2 years so the senior people don’t give a shit about you. I had no respect for the mid level senior people and think most of them are idiots who just got to where they are by being willing to work long hours. On the flip side my fund did a decent amount of internal promoting and had pretty good culture, and I felt like my bosses cared about my development. Also I latched onto VPs who didn’t want to work weekends unless it was necessary/had their own lives outside work which helped a lot. I had some deal sprints where the hours got high, but even at its worst I remember thinking that it was much better than banking. Overall the work ebbed and flowed a lot more - you knew you were going to be working a lot if you were on a live deal, and the hours were good when you weren’t.
Pay was way better in PE. $400K+ cash comp as an associate which is way more than friends who stayed in banking are making. Also benefits were way better - first class travel, nice hotels, lunch stipend, snacks in office, etc.
I had a decent amount of friends go to PE and I’d say it’s 50/50 if they had a good experience like mine or got absolutely crushed like the poster above. I think it really boils down to the firm and fund’s culture. If you’re recruiting on cycle I would encourage you to do as much research as possible about the fund to get an understanding of which experience you’re going to have.
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