London Version: PE Check-in on Attrition, Promotions and State of Play

All comes down to fund selection, you need to join a fund that is growing (I.e. fund two cycles before is performing well / has returned good DPI + recent fund has good deployment track record), has a differentiated strategy (LP capital is limited, they all invest in the top performing funds / brand names so the rest needs to differentiate) and where there is space for growth (track record of internal promotions, room at the top for you in your vertical / geographic coverage)

If that’s the case - which involves a fair bit of luck - you can be in a pretty sweet spot where the job is super interesting, you quickly get paid £600k+ all in as a 30 something years old and you have a real shot at making a few millions through carry.

If you join a struggling fund - one with a few bad exits / who lost the keys on some assets or that has team churn issues and likely fundraising issues (I.e. it’s not clear where they are in the cycle, haven’t done deals recently and are likely to shrink so will need to cut the team) its tough.

It’s tough to know all this outside in, in practice people who are solid at their job end up in a pretty good spot but that involves moving around from one fund to another at least once if the first pick wasn’t right.

Definitely not as easy to make it a few years ago but worth it and exits are still great if for some reason you don’t like it or it doesn’t work out. The basic rules still apply - you need to work hard, be genuinely interested and be a nice person to hang out with.