Typical PE Culture
What is the general culture like at your PE firm? Asking because in banking, there was this extremely strong sense of camaraderie, especially amongst the associates and analysts. To the point where if someone had too much work, others with capacity would raise their hand to offload some of it. Everyone was in it together.
PE seems the exact opposite. Been in the industry at the same firm for several years now, and it’s become clear that it’s more of an “every person for themselves” kind of mentality. There are small cliques here and there but people generally treat each other only as colleagues, will do anything to get ahead / step on someone to do so, and rush home to their significant other or spend time with their personal friends. Outside of firmwide mandatory team building events, any time someone tried to organize something informally (usually dinner and or drinks), there is an extremely weak turnout. Additionally, I feel like COVID made things worse where it is now acceptable / common to head home around 6 or 7, go to the gym / have dinner with your own friends / SO, then plug back in from home to finish up work the rest of the night. This is great, but also exacerbated the boundaries people set and makes everything feel a lot more transactional at work during the day.
Overall, I think my issue is that no one truly likes each other (besides the cliques here and there), and are basically just “friendly” in a fake way. Is this how your PE firm is / how do you feel about this?
PE depends on the firm but it’s mostly bro culture from my recruiting
Sounds right to me.
Agree with this. I have worked with different sector across my fund and some people are always like this, whereas sometimes you can find “good culture” where you get to know a team over time, you might catch lunch with someone on a recurring basis, and if they’re your senior they will be marginally more respectful of your time. But beyond that it does not fill the social need that many people look for work to satisfy.
This experience is for large cap. I would be curious for some LMM peers to chime in as I wonder if at a smaller firm better culture occurs with some sort of pattern.
YMMV. I work at a MF and get blasted with my team (read: dinner, drinks, club) anywhere between ~once a quarter to ~once a month. Pretty collegial at junior level and we always grab lunch together and stuff.
People are mostly professionally polite, definitely less camaraderie than in IB. But ultimately it all depends on your fund / team.
At the associate level, I still think there's a fair bit of camaraderie, though even then there are certainly a few associates who are sharp elbowed and often won't want to join in for coffee / lunch runs. All in all, I'm decent friends with most of my associates, though I don't expect to become as close as I did to my banking analyst buddies (with whom I still am in touch with at least once a week).
Above the associate level, this certainly seems to be the norm at my firm. We're an UMM in a Tier 1 city, but the interacting with VPs seems very transactional and there is little push to make the associates feel like part of the team. I'm not sure if this is on the VPs or if they have similar comments on the folks above them, but I really do not feel a sense of community at my firm and honestly prefer working from home given the poor in-office culture.
While I agree it is nice to be able to go home around 7 and eat dinner / work out / etc. before logging back on, I feel this has really ruined boundaries as I'm expected to be on call / responsive late into the night.
While I'm a fan of our associate culture, I think the overall culture of my firm is poor and we (associates) are treated as commodities rather than team members. Makes it tough to want to get up in the morning and drag myself into the office because I'm really not looking forward to seeing anyone outside of the other associates, but this ends up being 10% of the day and does not outweigh the WFH benefits.
The general culture described is broadly accurate to describe the tone for the industry as a whole.
It is night and day from Tech, Consulting, and even Banking where there is much more camraderie. In my experience, PE generally has quite an introverted culture (function of self selection over time) which contributes to this.
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