Skills learned in MF that you don’t in LMM

I have a different side to this. I came back to a LMM fund I interned at (originally from a Tier 3/4 city) after receiving top bucket at a top group at a MS/GS in NYC (think industrials, TMT, HC). I wanted to be closer to family due to some personal things going on.

Honestly the demands are just different. My really good friends almost all of who are at MFs often don't have a choice to how much they want to work. I have almost complete flexibility. The other thing and I can add more on to this later, just saw it come across my inbox, is that structure/debt etc. is different on a $30B deal in a way you don't understand until you see it. Every BP matters, nothing can be wrong, you get the QoE at 2:00 AM and need it in the model, and correct, for an IC meeting at 7:00 AM.

I personally think that is the biggest difference. The work can actually be more difficult on the LMM side too because the companies you are working with are so much less sophisticated. We're not a small fund ($700/800M) with $4B AUM and sometimes can have 1 finance person, maybe no finance team. You get financials direct out of netsuite, sometimes on cash accounting, buckets are wrong etc.