PE Live Deals Might Be the Worst Experience in Finance
I have worked in cap markets, banking, and now PE at a megafund. After a few years of doing this, I gotta say that live deals in PE are fucking hell on earth. Say goodbye to your personal life (as scant as it may have been) for a good 3-6 months. Expect to work every waking hour of every day including holidays and weekends. This is no exaggeration - I have been averaging probably 100 hours a week for the past 3 months. If you want a fast track for clinical depression, this is the perfect recipe. Get ready to get blown up for no reason on a Saturday afternoon for some dumb analysis a partner wants to see. Dont ever expect to go to bed before 2am. The people are fucking horrendous to work with too. The biggest pushovers you will ever meet who say yes to everything and have no respect for anyone, including themselves. Holy shit this is so miserable. If you are thinking about doing PE, don’t. Do literally anything else. I thought banking was bad, but this is 10x worse in every way. This job sucks more than I ever could have imagined. Truly soul crushing. I honestly cant think of a worse way to spend your time.
There's a reason PE is called pain tolerance investing :)
thought PE stands for Pain Enthusiast
Lol yes that too - key word being pain in all instances
Damn, that sucks.
*Sips coffee in LMM, working 40 hours/week, $450k total cash comp
The dream
What do your hours look like on live deals?
Stretches to 60-70 on live deals. We move pretty quick, though - typically close within 60 days from LOI.
Have closed a platform each year for the last few years.
What level are you at? Also, assuming your comp is weighted towards carry vs cash?
Are you heavily involved in operations yourself? From my understanding LMM is more ops focused. Could be good or bad depending on what you fancy.
Operationally we’re hands off aside from hiring executives and anything strategic finance related (LTIPs, M&A, refinancings, etc.). We defer to our above market comp executives to execute. It’s a win-win for all parties.
My former fund, also in the LMM, was way more operationally involved. They also bought smaller companies ($5mm EBITDA) and were highly, highly acquisitive (services consolidation focused). Learned a ton, but my life was hell.
It's difficult to understand this looking in, but these seats are unicorns and are not representative of the life in private equity nor LMM shops. Congratulations on finding this, but as someone who has fallen a victim to comparing my life to others, this is not a reasonable comparison.
U comment this gay little coffee joke literally every single time people are complaining about their job
Damn, you’re right. Hope your week gets better!
*Sips coffee in LMM, working 40 hours/week, $450k total cash comp
it is terrible. though HF drawdowns are probably more painful psychologically because you can't brute work your way out
Unfortunate reality is that you also can't work your way out of underperforming portcos but are expected to because you have "control." But if the markets are bad, company is bad, nothing you can really do and only so much cost you can take out.
Most accurate PE associate post, i feel you brother.
At least in banking you has some kind of camaraderie. In PE you just slave away in an empty office with your autistic principal that cannot hold a regular conversation for more than two minutes
Are the mid-levels in PE that terrible compared to MBA associates in banking?
Know that there's a lot of meaningless CYA work in banking but does that hold true for PE also where the mid-levels are more pedigreed?
And is this fund dependent (declining vs growing fund)?
i did PE pre HF. vps/directors were on your side (sometimes the MD too) against a tough client, in banking, vs. even post-MBAs 2-3 years older than you were your boss/client in PE.
i did tough culture EB/BB and ok culture MM PE, so don't think either were outliers
I thought the mid-levels in banking create extra work to please the MDs and the feedback loop continues for the client.
Is it different in PE since you're already on the buy-side. What work do mid-levels like to create that is unnecessary?
a lot of it is the expectation that the deal team turns over every single possible rock (or pebble) in diligence, which can require hours of analysis / reviews of materials for one little grain of info that may or may not have any significance to a potential risk / economic underwrite. But in the event a senior IC asks about something and you don't have a good response then it opens doors in their minds to what else could've been missed by the deal team.
What I can't get my head around is that the vast majority of "analysis" is useless noise. This industry is full of ppl with mental illness
Can you please elaborate on this?
Lol
Everyone knows this, yet keeps pushing to do the same one day. What's wrong with us?
I promise, it gets so much better and you gain more control over your schedule as a Sr ASO/VP! For realz :P
Lol I feel dumb but I can’t tell if ur trolling or not. My gut is yes haha
did the middle school spelling and text emoji not give it away?
I always have to resist laughing when banking analysts tell me they can’t wait for their personal lives to improve after they get into PE, especially when it’s a UMM or MF
I have heard of some MM and LMM associates who have better WLB than their banking stints tbf from my classs, espeically those outside the major cities. Agree is not the case at practically any notable UMM or MF fund or even most notable MM names. Think almost all "value" or "flexible capital" firms are sweatshops too just given how many things they look at.
Man, that sounds brutal. Unfortunately a lot of people I know who went into PE said the same thing about live deals — the hours can get completely out of control. At some point it stops being about productivity and just becomes a grind. It’s interesting how many industries are starting to look at automation to reduce some of that pressure on teams. I recently read something about th cost-benefit of AI call agents vs staffingand it made me think about how much manual workload still exists in finance and operations. Obviously it won’t fix PE culture overnight, but the amount of repetitive work people do in high-pressure environments is kind of wild.
No PE firm seriously looking at AI is doing it for the purposes of lowering the workload and letting people go home at 8pm instead of 12am. My firm is all gungho about getting AI systems in place so we can cut out the bs work and get back to focusing on the analysis...
This just means I'm getting more bs requests at 8pm now that I have all this free time
Sounds like a terrible partner. Need to work with experienced partners.
The experienced partners who know what they're doing often work less and get more deals done.
I have heard increasing cases of people moving from investing roles back into banking (I myself did this after having an absolutely horrible experience on the buyside). A lot of this holds true in most of MM+ buyside gigs. You essentially are working for autistic people who have nothing else in their lives other than work and then slam their juniors. Mid level is not much better in most buyside. Real place to be is a partner with real equity… good luck you basically need to start your own fund otherwise you will grind 80-100+ hour weeks to make someone else money. Banking may not be the path to make the most money but boy does it have a MUCH better lifestyle. Buyside is just getting worse as partners dont leave, exits are not occurring and now private credit is having an existential crisis. I honestly feel bad for the associates and analysts telling me they are leaving for PE or credit funds. I wish them good luck bc boy they will need it…
How did you make the case for moving back to banking? Thinking of doing this myself, but the general vibe I get is that banks are skeptical about the reasoning after you already made a move to the buyside. It's perceived as taking a step back so the process seems less straight forward.
Dolores nostrum deserunt sit tempora. Earum beatae minus magnam modi illum itaque. Consequatur voluptatem neque maxime nisi numquam deleniti cupiditate qui. Inventore et eos odit facilis qui voluptatum.
Id ut est quia voluptatum rerum itaque. Illum a saepe a deleniti quos soluta. Non nemo quo quaerat nam sapiente saepe. Numquam non et aut deserunt magnam ratione pariatur.
Ea fuga amet pariatur quasi quam quod. Nulla voluptas quia consectetur est repudiandae. Et nostrum officia ut.
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...
Dolor nisi est et consequuntur. Eos laudantium adipisci dolorum praesentium iusto repellat. Omnis repellat provident voluptatem id suscipit. Quos quia commodi soluta facilis molestias.
Ut ipsam est sed asperiores. Iste quas et quo architecto. Quia est minus aut eveniet. Unde ut repellendus perferendis veritatis. Ut mollitia vel ab laudantium.