PE is NOT paradise
Literally the fucking title. Jumped ship from a top MM (WB/LI/Baird) to MM fund and now work more for less.
Things we're not even having a serious look at but anyways why dont we do the fucking lbo and check where the precedents at, right?
Sheeesh A2A was just like three months away. Guess I gotta beg the MDs to take my stupid ass back now. Gonna die of shame.
What sort of MM?
A template simple lbo and pulling ciq comps should be quick <3 hour work stream. You should dhave a simple agreed page of outputs that you update. The vp should need to take a very quick skim with minimal tweaks needed. You just run cim case and haircut case (extrapolate history / triangulate industry growth rate) done
Yup seems like something BBs do with credit memos
Do PE firms use CIQ / FactSet? I thought this was just banks
This sounds so easy until you get that VP that's trying to "add value" and then it's the above plus adding in line items/cases/outputs, additional desktop research, "just throw a few slides together", etc. And then multiply that by the multiple times this happens a week plus your actual real deals, and the hours get real bad real quick.
Forgot to mention how they fly me twice a month to this one portco to ensure they do not go WFH mode JFL. Getting ready at 5 in the morning only to fly back EOD and play the catch up game in the evening to finish at 2am. Other things were happening in the meantime, you know what I mean?
This is the least value add thing in human history. Hysterically micromanaging. Name and shame pls
Posts like these are eye-opening lol. I am a first year who hit the desk 3 months ago and the hype around PE and buy-side recruiting has been making me anxious after deciding to opt out of on-cycle.
The full-time in-person IB life so far has been great (also at a LI/WB/Baird). I'm honestly contemplating staying for a 3rd year to carefully think about my options instead of rushing recruiting. Healthy balance of in-person and WFH, strong camaraderie / friendship with my fellow analyst class, and flexibility in leaving the office whenever I want. It's still a grind - but the work is easy and pay is high. Overall a MUCH better experience than my sweaty COVID IB internship last year which made me hesitant to accept the return offer.
It gets worse. Group dynamics can change at a whim.
I was staunchly against recruiting as I experienced a great culture and felt a sense of camaraderie amongst the entire working stack from SMDs to analysts. Then myself and many others quickly realized my shop is no different than any other sweat shop where MDs take home millions and have no regard for how tough some transactions/clients will be on the deal team.
Would suggest you keep your options open and still talk to recruiters. Or you’ll end up like me, an A3 desperately seeking to jump from banking
Always be recruiting
strong camaraderie with your analyst class is huge until they all leave and you're the only one left :(
Sounds like another brother lost to a shitty, generic JAMMBO (Just Another Middle Market Buyout). Good luck and godspeed recruiting out to greener pastures.
Any guidance on fund size you can give / red flags you missed interviewing? At a similar bank headed to MM/UMM PE and am now scared
Ballpark of a billion for the last fund. For the red flags, the headhunter fucked me over saying they would give carry so shouldn't be worried about shitty base.
There's no fucking carry until VP. Should have confirmed with them during interviews, though.
If you thought you would receive carry as an associate you were smoking something
Is this nyc?
If you read through this forum and talked to alumni and took away that PE is paradise, then you were choosing to believe that. Associate at PE is very comparable to associate in IB from a workload perspective, and it gets talked about repeatedly. Even at more senior levels, it’s stressful, frustrating, and the next round of larger compensation is always a few more years away.
The difference is that if you do well at associate, you keep rising through the ranks and can focus on interesting work, start having control of your schedule, and can increase your earnings with no career ceiling as long as AUM continues to grow. There are also hundreds (thousands?) of PE funds out there, some of which have phenomenal work-life balance.
I’m not going to shit on banking because it’s another great career path, but keep in mind that even senior bankers are still beholden to hitting sales numbers and winning / servicing clients. They also get heavily culled in a downturn (see Goldman announcing hundreds of layoffs and reduced bonuses yesterday), while PE cash comp is based on static fees and marked illiquidly - meaning a lot less volatility (although carry upside certainly varies by vintage).
Would you say you still travel a lot in PE? I have come to realize after my first few times traveling with my firm, is that I am not the biggest fan of it.
Typically 1-2x per month usually for 24-36 hours at a time. Partners tend to travel more
Is it still stressful for you as a VP? Doesn't sound like it gets better even at junior partner? What keeps you around?
Context: VP2 at semi-brand name PC shop with path to Principal. Always debated the PE route, but the stress / hours scared me off. I heard stories from our buyout desk of a new partner doing a bad deal (0.0x MOIC) and being shown the door.
I mean full loss on an LBO is really, really hard so the partner must have really fucked up lol. Or was it a COVID-impacted business?
This hits home. At a growing firm (about to move from fund 1 to fund 2) and work with some real type A assholes. Everything has be done the long way, no short cuts to get to the same answer. On a call so I don’t respond to an email instantly, then get a follow up email from VP asking if I’m going to respond here and reminding me it’s best practice to confirm receipt of all emails. Thanks chief, appreciate you reminding me how emails work and sorry I’m not able to respond to all emails within seconds. What’s that? Partners requesting an email update so save us work from doing a deck. Neurotic type A VP requests we do a 15 page deck anyways because he wants to be detailed. I thought moving to PE would get me away from the overly demanding / needy bankers that waste my time working to 2am and working all weekend and somehow found the group of people who are more needy and demanding than bankers. We’re so insecure of letting others do our work that we end up basically doing our third parties work for them. Hired a bank for a sellside, somehow I end up in the model and CIM because people didn’t think the CIM looked great and it wasn’t done “our way”. The CIM was fine, wasn’t a world beater, but hired a reputable MM shop and they made a standard CIM most shops would do from their template. I know other third parties have to hate us because we’re a real pain in the ass to work with (constant comments and push back on everything).
I joke with my old analyst class that I’m going to have to move back to IB for better hours, which I plan on doing after I finish my associate stint. Basically work all weekend 90% of the time now. Always something to do and requests on Friday for something for Monday, which means I need to have it done on Sunday for review. I mean our VPs work the same hours so it’s hard to complain that they aren’t doing the same, but it’s also completely unnecessary. I can’t imagine being in my 30s with kids and grinding out more hours than IB analysts. Doesn’t help that I found out through this process that I hate asset management work. Updates to IC every two weeks, internal update decks, quarterly reporting, etc. Just hate doing all the internal work for non deal related work. Just not for me
Tough. Also at a new / growing firm and that has not been in experience at all.
Big L
LOL at hiring third parties and doing their work for them…. Happens everywhere
Gotta build the narrative right for the lender group
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