Silver Lake, H&F associate insights

Hey guys, looking for insights into Silver Lake and H&F:

For Silver Lake: any general insights into associate experience and culture

For H&F: are associate programs generalist across verticals? If not, do you recruit into a vertical during on-cycle or do you get placed after you get your offer? Insights into the SF office particularly.

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SLP: very intense culture (assoc are seen as a resource to be utilized, hours are very tough, nearly dysfunctional mid-senior level communication w/ purely top-down decision making); returns have not been great recently bc they got caught up in a bunch of fads (big backers of media and sports assets), but shifting back towards bread and butter LBOs, a lot more structure in their investments; historically well respected for L/S HF-exits

H&F: also sweaty (although hours are marginally better and there is better culture with more respect for juniors as potential partners in the future), strong track record although recent vintages TBD given overweight tech deployments in 2020/2021, more intellectual and focused on “bullet-proof” businesses vs paying a cheap price or engineering returns; decent HF exits for those that want it, but many follow 2+2+2 or do smth non-HF

Would say given better culture, returns, and better pay at H&F, you’d be hard pressed to find someone that argues SLP is better

 

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