I don’t think my life could get any worse working a corporate job. I truly believe this. Here is a short list of some of the unreasonable things I have had to do so far in my associate stint:
- Had to do work on both my rehearsal dinner day and wedding day (not a lot, but still got asked to do things when people knew I was getting married)
- Had to do work on my honeymoon (same situation as above)
- I had a pretty serious operation (my team knew about this) that was medically necessary and had to work the next day (it was a Saturday)
- Had to work on Christmas and New Year’s Day multiple years
- Had to work on Thanksgiving multiple years
- Had to work on 4th of July multiple years
- Had to cancel a week long vacation that I had communicated months in advance
- Informed team about the death of a non-immediate family member and was a still asked to work on the day I was out
This is all in addition to the normal PE hell that people describe on here like working till 3am every day and never having weekends off. This job fucking sucks and the people who work in this industry are losers who never had the sack to try anything on their own. Think twice about doing this job - it is ruining my life. Save yourself.
Welp, literally just got a few hours of comments at 11:30pm on a Sunday night so gotta bounce! Share your miserable stories below!
Was the work you had to do for substantive work ie live deal sprints? Or more tedious portico work that wasn’t truly urgent?
Not OP but I can guarantee you that maybe 3% of the work he’s ever been asked to do was “genuinely urgent / live deal incoming deadline” type of work. Can also guarantee that precisely 0% of the work he was asked to do on his wedding day, Christmas, or Thanksgiving fell into either of those buckets.
The issue with this industry maturing and saturating with competition is not just what everyone talks about re: return compression - it’s the long, slow, and extremely painful process of right sizing all of the truly mediocre mid-levels out there that can no longer justify their place at a fund. These people often get 3/4 years to prove their worth (unlike associates) and they will do literally anything and be the worst fucking human beings on the planet to try and hold on to their place. Everything they ask for is “urgent”, nothing can go more than 10 minutes without being prioritized. In my experience, the truly miserable times on this job have been created by these types of twats. I hope they all get fucking fired and their partners cheat on them
This is the industry in a nutshell. A good 25-30% (maybe more) of firms/people need to just go away as there is zero differentiation in "talent" or "secret sauce" other than paying the highest price for assets and praying something good happens.
maybe its time to go back to FT Partners (140k base btw)
This all absolutely sucks and I’m sorry, but frankly working on your wedding/honeymoon and during family emergencies is largely on you — you need to learn how to say no. I work at a MF, and during extremely important personal times when I have been asked to do things I’ve simply politely declined and explained the situation, and it’s been fine every time. Have I annoyed people the few times this has happened? I’m sure, but people will often respect you as well for it. This industry is full of psychopaths who let work completely consume all their time, but most people aren’t deliberately trying to ruin your life. You need to have the balls to be direct with folks that you’re not working on your freaking wedding day or honeymoon. Why tf did you even bring your laptop?
“Why did you bring your laptop” is crazy lol. Don’t think I know a single person that wouldn’t. I literally think I would be fired if I didn’t and was just unresponsive for that extended of a time period. What type of kum ba yah fund are you at??
While I did take my laptop it would be absolutely insulting for me to have been asked to do work on my honeymoon and/or night before my wedding night/rehearsal dinner aside from maybe answering a couple simple questions for my associate or just admin task that wouldn't take more than 2-3 min max.
To OP: Needless to say while PE is terrible WLB you are clearly working for a horrible group/boss that doesn't care about you and I am sorry you had to deal with that. Hopefully you are able to line up a new gig in the short-to-medium term. I am at a MF as well and this would be largely frowned upon and when I was getting ready for my wedding I was given a lot more freedom/time the week leading up to my wedding.
While your employer has much to blame, you can only blame yourself as well for letting this happen to you. PE is just a job at the end of the day, albeit a very well paying job. It's easy to make this feel like your entire worth / life as you're spending 70-80+ hours a week but it shouldn't be when it comes to priorities. Yes, you'll sacrifice hobbies weekends but working during your honeymoon (?), sickness, etc. you are telling yourself (subconsciously) that your job is #1 over your spouse, health, etc. When (if) you have a child, are you going to miss his/her birth as well cause you were working?
Missed the entire point
No. This is not normal MF behavior. I work for one of the more intense MFs and was told not to check email on my wedding and honeymoon… and that’s exactly what happened. Similar situation for deaths, including non-immediate family, where partners and principals say “we’ve got this, you do what you need to do.”
Push back, and hard.
OP of this comment. Again, I’m at a MF, and I did not bring my laptop on my honeymoon. I made it very clear months in advance when I was going to be out for my wedding, so people were aware. I would check my work phone at the end of each day, and the couple of times I got reached out to, I basically said I’d be happy to help after I got back. It’s a job, dude. We’re not saving lives out there. I literally could not give less of an f if my principal gets pissed at me for saying I’m not working during PTO that I’m legally entitled to for my wedding for which I let everyone know 6 months in advance.
How do you push back in a socially acceptable way? Usually this ends poorly for the folks that I have watched push back.
Bro has clearly never worked at tmega fund.
As weird as this feels actually saying, working on your wedding day says more about you than your employer. Every other instance is tough but not unheard of. I wasn't working my entire honeymoon but was gone for two weeks and couldn't just not keep up with where things were at for my own sanity and would check my computer during the early mornings / late at night (not like I was deep in a model just responding to emails). Working on your wedding day simply means you have zero backbone
i think your firm or boss is just horrible to the bones, attended many weddings by people in MF and they were fine when it comes to big personal events
Bro what working on wedding day is ridiculous I would say not available apologies
LMAO mods remove my comment which was literally just "yup that's why I left, fuck the old guard"
What are you doing now?
Special sits holdco
You have free will my guy. The one who chose to work on your wedding day was you. Anybody giving you flak for that isn't worth your respect / time anyway
..
Wedding and honeymoon are sacred cows. What firm is this lol
Keep in mind PE is the subprime crisis of our era.
When my daughter was born, she had a lung infection and was in the NICU and nearly died. I was an associate on a few live deals at my fund. I was not unstaffed on any of my projects and had to finish our LP conference materials. The VPs and Partners knew this… I was working the next day.
The VP on my deals told me, “the best associates get stuff done, even on vacation, even on time off.”
I left (ignore title), and it was the best career decision I ever made. Not worth it.
Fuck that PE firm, glad you left. Hope your daughter is healthy now.
Hope all is well now with your family! Assuming you left without anything lined up? How did you navigate that given your situation and what did you ultimately ended up doing that made it a great career decision?
This is the type of fuckery that causes this industry (IB, PE, etc.) to get a bad reputation. I had a live deal going when my last child was born, who also needed a few days in the NICU. Luckily, I did not have that experience because I would have gone off on someone. Now, when I was sitting in the NICU watching him, hooked up to tubes, I almost assuredly had my phone out checking email for a live deal that I sourced and was leading at the time, but it was on my time as I needed a distraction from the anxiety around this.
Once the Boomers are gone, things will improve because our generation came up in a different time where fathers are demanded/want to be present as part of the family. At MM firms (and I assume others are even worse), there is a clear distinction between the old guard and the new. If your firm offers you a month or three of paternity leave and you choose to use it, the 55+ MDs all hem and haw because they never did such a thing and cannot relate. Meanwhile, they've nearly all been divorced and sacrificed any relationships with their kids for work.
One of my prior shops was an absolute nightmare place to work and even across all my other friends in the industry, working over your wedding and honeymoon is unheard of. You should definitely look to leave.
-
You're just as guilty in contributing to the toxic culture as your seniors. Don't just bow down and work like you are, especially on big days like your wedding. That is a no brainer
The fact that you chose to work during your wedding period means you’ll never be respected by your superiors.
Consciously or subconsciously,they know you’re a pushover
Not to get into an argument on the benefits of PE (investor returns, increased post-investment/buyout business efficiency, lowered operational costs, increased best practice and strategic execution)...
...but it seem there are also critics from outside PE who view PE as having the same infamy as the OP wrote ("PE is a joke", "the normal PE hell that people describe on here", "people (in PE) are losers"). Examples:
It's because the weak always hate the strong. They like to over-intellectualize it but the fact is they hate PE because it represents what they can't do
Well PE can't provide adequate returns unless interest rates are at zero, so it looks like PE was actually the weak only pretending to be strong. And so says the consultant, the weakest member of the economic food chain who can be completely replaced by AI.
All of the articles are accurate. What private equity has eroded is essentially the business model/value of "caring about your customer". Instead of delivering more value and accepting slightly lower margins, the approach now is to strip away any concession and attach a price tag to it, justified by the logic “whoever wants it will pay more for it”. It’s the most extreme interpretation of Milton Friedman’s view that nothing else matters and everything should go to those willing to pay the most and never “wasted” on anyone else.
Apple was never owned by private equity, so this is only an analogy. But the societal shift PE helped normalize is like going from the old Apple, where you bought a phone and received a box with headphones and a charger, to the new Apple, where you get only the phone and must pay extra for the accessories and for subscriptions in a product that was already in past iPhones - think about those examples across healthcare, sports, retail, etc. Consultants have also played their part in this.
Economic-wise what PE does is 100% in line with economic theory and whatever, but all this high efficiency of watching costs, and squeezing growth and margins is at the expense of customers. No PE firm will ever recapitalize their business to invest all the proceeds in the business, in R&D, and do something extremely innovative in said business line. It's just maintenance. No innovation. No real net productivity. PE guys can't operate businesses and external management that is brought in is just to squeeze margins and not to develop any sort of visionary outlook for the company. 4-5 years and they're out as well. It's a short-term game.
I enjoy the deal-making and transactional energy of private equity, but as a raison d’etre, the industry might just as well never have existed.
Marc Rowan at Apollo said "we make ten decisions a year. The rest is ceremony." The entire industry is levered beta or stripping down companies. Very little true alpha.
How is this possible? Because the US net investment position at the moment is -$26 trillion. Think about that. For most of history the US stock market was 30% of the global total, mirroring our percentage of global GDP. Now we are 70% of the global equity market. There is $26T of foreign money in the US, and that has been the source of all the capital invested in alternatives... a global search for yield....
This is all going away as we speak, and along with rising interest rates the entire alternative universe is going to find out just how little value add most of the work you ever did in that seat actually was.
You made a great decision because there is no longer any money in PE. Simple as that. It should never have existed in the first place tbh.
During COVID I was an ASO and staying with my mom who got COVID that in the initial bout. It was really bad.
I asked my Director if I could have 45 minutes to go pick up her medicine, and he said no, if you go offline for 45 minutes, just send your laptop back to the office.
Jesus! I hope you quit
You don't ask in those situations. You go for 45 min and if asked just say your Internet crashed or make up an excuse. Come on people...
Fuga quod accusamus ad. Ut vel ipsum nihil aspernatur quis est. Consequuntur ut a quaerat at atque veritatis doloribus. Eligendi ea dolorem ea fuga.
Iste nostrum neque voluptatibus cumque soluta sed. Qui cum nemo deleniti sint temporibus enim eos.
Omnis accusamus aut sint modi soluta omnis. Maxime neque modi impedit dolorem sit fuga. Quo minima sint quas suscipit et porro eveniet.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Consectetur quisquam porro reprehenderit ut repudiandae culpa. Et vero error placeat officiis laudantium eos. Quo maiores atque est eveniet iure. Neque qui a vel minima. Placeat enim ut nihil temporibus earum enim officiis. Ad eos nihil voluptate culpa quo.
Quia aut ut quidem illum quisquam voluptate. At nihil dignissimos suscipit incidunt. Similique qui et aliquam corrupti id.