Seeking Advice - How to recover from being kicked out

Thanks for sharing your situation.I think there are a variety of issues here, none of which are especially unusual but are still concerning. It's pretty easy to value your worth by how much money you make, especially if you didn't have a lot of it growing up. A lot of people get into this industry for the prospect of making a lot of money and a lot of people read these forums incessantly to try and plan their moves strategically so they can maximize income. However, if you are experiencing thoughts of suicide or severe depression I would urge you to seek help - find a counselor to talk to, regardless of price, it's important to focus on your mental and emotional help.

Secondly, you said it yourself - careers are 30+ years long and this will be a blip in it for you. Will you be able to work at KKR next? Probably not, but there are lots of great shops out there. Plus, you're earning good money. Most Americans don't earn anywhere near to 150k (regardless if they're in corporate finance or not). Chin up.

Can't contribute much here but best of luck!

Sounds like what happened to me early in my career.  Dream job turns into a nightmare and I'm on the outside looking in for a few months.  Lucky for me I was able to stay in PE but that was after I had "been blackballed from PE in Boston."...direct quote from a recruiter.

Yes you can get back in but it's going to be a major up hill battle because the question will always come up why you left and it's a small industry.  The key is knowing someone really well at another fund that can vouch for you and your work product (the only thing that saved me).

Good luck,

Patrick

Hold on to the fact that over the course of your career this is a rounding error. I spent nearly 9 months unemployed and walking dogs after a blow up at work that cost me my job as an early employee at what is not a notable alternatives firm. Every year that followed has made that incident less and less of an issue.

If you want to stay in PE I would suggest going to a small shop where your background may carry weight despite the noise and working your way back up the ladder.

I’m closer to your level, but I didn’t get a return offer after my summer BB internship. I ended up going to a different BB and completed my two year analyst stint. I couldn’t get any on-cycle PE offers until I landed a UMM PE role well after the official process. I did well at the UMM PE role and now I’m up for VP / Principal after ranking well. As long as you work hard, these things revolve themselves so don’t worry about small step backs in a long career.

Life is rarely linear for the majority of the population. Just take a look at this pandemic. You could of been laid off, you could of got Covid and been hospitalized.

It's very easy to be grateful in these tough times. 

The cards that were dealt to you in life, are the cards that were dealt to you. Some people are dealt A-A, others 7-2. 

It's up to you to decide how to play the game of life, with the very cards you have in your own hand. 

Research shows that more $ after a certain point doesn't necessarily lead to more happiness (fortunately or unfortunately?)

I'll leave you with this quote, as you go about thinking how to play your own hand: "I’m a Great Believer in Luck. The Harder I Work, the More Luck I Have"

You're still way too early in your career. I'd focus on the new gig and try to stay at least 2 years and maximize your learning experience. I know comp matters but when you're still starting out focus on being apart of a team where you work with strong leaders and develop transferable skills. 

You're in tech corp dev so easy to move over to a PE, Growth or VC role in a few years, if you want. But as one of the other users said consider doing something entrepreneural (ex. a searchfund) so you don't have to rely on a pay check in the future and get real equity. Senior people in PE/HF get fired all the time too. 

You need to be honest with yourself and do a cold hard truth assessment of why you failed at the MF role. It is unusual for them to push someone out, even for performance reasons. So that is very valuable feedback you’ve gotten from the universe. Need to see that, understand that, pull it apart. Engine was smoking and caught fire. Time to take it apart and rebuild.

Something in your “how to be a beast” manual was right on the money — that’s how you got there in the first place. But other areas had structural issues. Thats 100% normal. For you to have gotten there in the first place means you’re at a level where anything is repairable.

Figure out the answer. Fix it. There is nothing in life that isn’t fixable.

This is a game of continuous improvement. Recursive optimization. Maybe this one area that when fixed makes you superhuman? This feedback is very valuable. Don’t gloss over it.

Set backs only feel like set backs in the moment. If you’re dynamically adapting, it always turns into a massive net positive. It’s okay to feel bad and beat yourself up over it, that feeling is what neurologically drills into you that “this is not an outcome to be repeated.” You’re innately a winner, that’s why it feels so devastating.

PM me if you want to talk through what went wrong and how to fix it and how/if/when to get back into the industry.

Don't give up, that's it

I went through a very similar situation many years back.

Honestly impressed you found another job this quickly. When I did my disastrous brief stint in PE, under a truly terrible Partner, I seriously contemplated suicide. And even after a good night's sleep, considered just giving up on life and becoming a NEET. Embarrassingly, I made a rage post on WSO about the Partner, before quickly deleting it.

Thankfully I had a good group of friends who talked me off the ledge, and I decided to go back to IB. While my problem was with a bad firm, and my experience not at all indicative of most PE firms, it had nonetheless soured me on the industry.

Since you say that money is a significant motivator for you, and you aren't satisfied with $150k, maybe consider IB?

The guys from my Analyst class who are now Partner/Principal at Megafunds likely make more than me, but unless you have an ex-wife leeching a significant chunk of your income or an egregious drug habit, you will find it difficult to spend your all-in comp if you get to the MD level and are reasonably competent at your job.

Keep your head up. Pretty much everyone on the buyside has been fired at one point or another (myself included) - you haven't done this long enough if you haven't been. If I were you I'd take a step back and really decide where you want to be in ten years. The one thing I've learned is there are a lot of paths to becoming rich - I have dopey friends from College that went into RE and now make 2-3x what I make. For now, you're in a great seat. Don't underestimate what grinding 2-3 years in tech can unlock for you and don't forget tech is a far more attractive industry than hedge funds are.

get your story straight - apply for jobs where you know comp is in-line with your goals - reach out to your network and let them know what you’re looking for. job market is hot, don’t just sit and wait or listen to people saying “money isn’t everything” or “go on your own”. you don’t know what you can get without trying. if all else fails stay and reassess from there - this could take several months/years before you find what you want - even by then you might be making enough/see enough upside in corp dev that you don’t need to leave anyway. but for now you grind the interview process while getting better at your current role and focusing on what you can take away from this experience elsewhere