Sustainable jobs after PE?

Be selective and look for roles where they recognize the value of the experience you had in private equity. $175-225K all in for a largely 9-5 corporate role post PE associate programs is realistic. 

Network with guys who did IB+PE and then transitioned to a non high finance role - they might be hiring or they might know of people looking for (and willing to pay up for) someone with your background.

Don’t rule out “boring” F500 company corp dev and corp strategy teams which often have a lot of support staff (so you don’t do as much grunt work or reporting) and have firmer boundaries in place regarding PTO and hours. Believe it or not, a lot of non sexy companies also are really pro WFH (because their teams were already so geographically dispersed to begin with). These jobs are also great because you’re close to all the decision makers and they can quickly evolve into really interesting, autonomous, and impactful individual contributor type roles where you’re doing a self directed project for the c-suite. Its also just kind of fun getting to learn about how a more tangible product or service is built and delivered and to be on the same “team” as everyone and working toward the same shared goals. There are also occasionally cool international opportunities at some of these boring businesses that you can get access to if you’re on a visible team that’s close to leadership. 

I personally think early stage startups aren’t worth spending a lot of time on (def apply and interview to see for yourself!) because of low cash comp (with equity offers that are highly misunderstood, misrepresented, or outright predatory in many cases), surprisingly awful cultures at some of them, and generally more “keep the lights on” work. Larger more established companies tend to want you to focus on transformative efforts vs helping to establish the core business model. That said, some of my friends who went that route after PE absolutely love it - so I’m sure others have valid counter arguments to my thoughts.