Need Feedback on Senior Associate Comp Range

Hi all,

Posting this under a burner account as I post fairly regularly. To give some background I'm an Associate at an industry focused fund in a major US city. We're fresh off a new fundraise and have about $300M in AUM. I've been at the firm for right around 2 years now and am planning on having the year end conversation with the partners in a few weeks. Returns for the fund have all been good so far and partners are happy with my performance, we're not a 2 and out firm so I'm confident that there will be a role for me moving forward.

I'm currently a little under comped as I came on in a time (2 years ago) when the firm was much smaller and I was somewhat of a non traditional background(BB internship --> Industry M&A prior to PE). So my comp overall was in the high 100s all-in with no carry. In the beginning the Work/Life balance was also pretty good so I was ok taking a little bit of a paycut.

Now we're a bigger fund, I've taken on way more responsibility(I pretty much run the E2E deal process with limited partner involvement, no VPs at the firm), and the hours are more aligned to truer PE hours, what type of comp range should I ask for moving forward as a Senior Associate?

After consulting all the various PE comp reports, I'm thinking somewhere in the mid 200s all-in with a small amount of carry is reasonable for this type of fund, but I'm curious as to what others have seen.

4 Comments
 

Depending on how many total heads are in the office and how many Analyst/Associates are below you, 215-250 is in-line plus carry. Trying to jump to much in comp is easy to say no to from a partner prospective because they were getting away with paying X to employee A and now employee A wants X + 30% more to do their job.

26 Broadway where's your sense of humor?
 

That makes sense and good point about the big comp jump. Maybe it just means I have to start looking externally.

Currently we have 2 Analysts(who are really only sourcing anyways so no deal execution help) and no other Associates and no VPs. The one other Associate left two months ago and we've been attempting to backfill. Thats one of the reasons I feel somewhat justified in asking for more as I've been getting crushed without help for a while now.

 

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