Sweaty funds - how do VPs work most weekends?
Work at a fund with a reasonably good WLB and can’t imagine how life is in very sweaty funds. What do people regularly working 70+ hours even when not in deal sprints do to be always that busy? Is the constant screening of potential targets and subsectors (prompted by Principals/MDs) taking most of their time? Is my fund “less sweaty” simply because Seniors put less pressure on VPs, resulting in relaxing periods while not on live deals?
Ideas welcome - haven’t gone through the IB route so never experienced a sweaty environment.
Basically your MDs just always have something for you to do either ad hoc tasks on the weekend or on Friday they give you an inordinate amount of shit they want to see on Monday.
If I was running a firm I would obviously keep IC on Mondays but I generally hear that the closer IC is to Friday on a forward basis (e.g., Tuesday > Monday, Wednesday > Tuesday), the better the WLB is because your weekends aren't getting crushed by getting your ducks in a row for Monday.
Also depends on submission deadlines for IC. Some firms have Monday IC but have Thursday / Friday submission deadlines.
Also depends on how "materials-oriented" firms are when going to IC. I have seen investment IC decks for the same investment at different firms be 30 - 50 slides vs. 300+ pages in word (for not even the final committee step) which has significant impacts on workload as well.
My experience is that whether it’s a 30-50 page deck or 300 page deck, life will suck. The page count is a red herring and sometimes during recruiting, they will tell you things like “you’ll do meaningful work here given we only have x page IC decks and minimize useless work”. In practice, this is all BS and you end up reiterating on the same pages and model over and over and end up having a significant amount of appendix pages that no one looks at.
Not really. IC on Weds means submit by Monday - which means your entire weekend is fuckkkked. IC on Friday is probably best for WLB but uncommon as it doesn’t align with processes. IC Monday most usual which means submit Friday or Saturday so you have some hope of a semblance of a weekend / Sunday
I had IC Monday submit on Saturday night, spend all Sunday drafting mock Q&A to prep for meeting Monday…
I found that a lot of VPs in PE overplay how much they work. Yes, if you are in the trenches and doing the model / data pack with the Associates, you are working just as much if not more because you are also reviewing work at the same time. However, if you are just reviewing and suggesting other analyses / model changes to run, don’t bs me and say you are working more hours than Associates. That being said, I do give them credit on stuff like QoE and other diligence work streams as they are expected to lead the calls (i.e., actually know what you are talking about) vs Associates just coming up with 2-3 good questions to sound smart. They also spend more time on some of the softer work streams in PE so that obviously creates an urgency in one’s day to day even if limited deal activity, but I’m not sure it’s necessarily super deadline driven.
The reality is there are dozens of factors that impact hours so you usually cannot flag one single thing. A VP is that concerned about their own performance is going to find a way to spend an extra 20 hours a week versus one who is highly confident in their standings at the firm.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, and there are many exceptions, but often times the VPs fail to delegate enough or they put the pressure on themselves resulting in increased hours. Some VPs want to (or are expected to) go through every file in the dataroom and know the materials cold. Some don’t trust their associates, or have bad associates, and end up spending inordinate amounts of time reviewing or even re-doing materials. Life as a VP is a LOT easier if you have a talented associate — I once went through dozens of iterations on a somewhat complex financial analysis before I finally just spent 4-5 hours and did it myself (I had received performance feedback to delegate more). Heck, some VPs are just not as efficient and need to read materials multiple times themselves before they click. I’d say it is 50% to do with firm and culture and 50% to do with the individual.
Would you say it is a hit or miss depending on the competency of the Associates being hired on by the firms?
I worked with VPs who spent those extra hours combing through details and not delegating work.
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