London UMM / MF PE with WLB?

Warburg, H&F and Apollo are big sweatshops, but they pay super well (at least WP and H&F do, guess Apollo too but don't know first hand)

CVC is rough I have heard

Blackstone not too bad

Bain has pretty good culture

From KKR and Carlyle, I got mixed views

Advent not too bad either

Generally speaking, how sweaty a shop is on the associate level  a function of 1) how lean they run 2) how thorough diligence is 3) how they approach staffing (only 1-2 associates per deal independent of deal size/dynamics? do they leverage banks/advisors or do everything in-house?) 4) how painful / insecure / hardo / psycho are the seniors? Do they focus on value add stuff or useless busy work?

• H&F is sweaty but mainly due to being super lean while still being very thorough in diligence. Leverage advisors and banks quite a bit.
• Baincap is very thorough in dilligence and have a rep of sometimes boiling the ocean. But also will throw a lot of bodies at a deal if they want to run hard at it, which improves lifestyle quite a bit. Overall niece people with the usual few bad apples that one would expect.
• CVC is a sweatshop because they run super lean and associates have to manage a ton of portcos while doing deals. They also leverage advisors a lot. You get the best economics in return out of all MFs due to the early deal carry. Net-net a good deal.
• Cinven is a mixed bag, some teams are said to have great culture and good hours, while others very painful/harsh seniors and on the mid levels a few people had to leave due to the workload taking a toll on them in the past years. Very political and not very transparent.
• Silverlake is said to have toxic/painful seniors and like to do a lot of expert calls in house instead of outsourcing to MBB, which adds to the workload. A shit show and many juniors try to exit quickly once they realize what they have gotten themselves into. Would avoid working there.
• Advent I mainly heard good things - also staff bigger deal teams if needed and are smart with levering advisors. Overall niece people with the usual few bad apples that one would expect. Have great fundraising trajectory and returns.