PE Fund Staffing - Am I Getting Boxed Out?

Want to get a check on what typical staffing is at a GP. I'm a senior associate at a $1bn fund and we've made a couple mid-level outside hires, so want to figure out if my promotion path is getting squeezed or if we're just getting to a more normal staffing level since we've been pretty underwater lately.

We have 3-4 partners, 2 principals, 3 VP's, 4 SA's and 2 Associates (one of which is probably going to be promoted soon). My thought would be that the natural hire is at the associate level, but I recently learned we just hired another VP. So that brings us to 4 VP's and 4-5 SA's fighting for a VP position. 

Does this sound like a normal staffing level, or is it an over-saturation at the mid level? I was pretty hopeful about my chances of growing within this organization but the recent hiring has gotten me more concerned. We've definitely been overstaffed lately but i would have hoped that would have been alleviated by Associate hires, not more VP's / SA's.

4 Comments
 

Assuming the path from SA --> VP is 1 year....that seems saturated as fuck, bro. Are they planning a massive next fundraise or expansion? That's pretty fucking stacked and I'd assume 4 of y'all gonna get rekt. Which is some pretty retarded planning because I'd assume most of the SA's would leave after getting passed over and now everyone's capacity is even more fucked.

For reference, my ~$1bn fund is something like: 3 partners, 2 principals, 3 VPs, 1-2 SAs, 3-4 Assoc. Even with this, with how lean the teams are, the SA to VP promotion at my firm is still rough.

 
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