Taking a Lateral Demotion
I am currently a 3rd year LMM PE associate who is nearing the end of a three-year program at my current firm. My firm is pretty strict on the three-year-and-out policy to push associates to B-school. I had decided pre-COVID that I would forgo the MBA and try to lateral instead to another MM fund with a partner track.
Recruiting has been tough with the state of the M&A market and I've finally landed another PE offer, although it would essentially be starting from scratch as an associate at a MF group that sits outside of traditional buyout strategies. There's no guarantee that I would make it to VP here and the base comp is actually slightly lower than what I make now.
Am I crazy for thinking I should hold out for something more aligned with my experience/objectives?
How far apart is the strategy? If it's something comparable to traditional PE then it's not a terrible move (the MF name helps) but if it's something further afield (e.g. something that's heavily debt oriented) then it may be an issue.
For what it's worth though, I had a friend in a similar position to you (3rd year senior associate in LMM -> 1st associate at UMM) and he absolutely crushed it and got a VP offer (after getting b school sponsored). If your peer set is first year associates straight out of banking, you should be able to run circles around them in terms of leading diligence streams, moving processes forward, working with management teams, etc. This could put you on a virtuous cycle where you'll get better staffings / opportunities to differentiate yourself earlier on. At the end of the day it's a personal situation though.
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