What are “sharp elbows”
Hi all - have heard the term sharp-elbowed thrown around a lot but not sure what it really means. Is it just willing to fuck people over to get ahead? Is it required to advance in PE?
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Thick skin, no nonsense, cutthroat, winner takes all approach.
Hmmm I feel like most of my mid levels are like this. Do you think it develops as a mid level or are people just like that? Some associates I can see becoming sharp elbowed
It's a cultural thing and more on a firm by firm basis.
Bump
It means you’re willing to be an asshole and throw others down in order to get ahead. Have fun working with people like that
iron sharpens iron
Pointy elbow thing to say
Don't agree.
Found the nice, sensitive guy who's in touch with his emotions lol
Have fun being greedy and never truly being happy with what you have
Jon Gray pushing out his co-head Chad Pike
Outchaded Chad
Outpiked Pike too
Kewsong Lee pushing out Glenn Youngkin at carlyle
How do you deal with these types of people? My banking experience wasn’t sharp elbowed at all. My pe fund has a ton of people willing to fuck the next person over to get ahead
Tbh, since I was an analyst I built a reputation of being "aggressive". Sometimes I would get in trouble for it, but my work quality has always been very strong so it worked out for me - I'm now a principal at a 3bn aum PE fund. Just remember, being "sharp elbowed" or cutthroat doesn't mean "rude" or a prick, you just make decisions that can be pretty rough at times.
We bought a company a few years back and I was pretty aggressive during the bidding process and cut out another group that wanted to do a joint ownership deal - when we bought the company I went to their head office and fired 70% of staff after 3 weeks of redundancy checks. Made me actually feel like shit but that's what it was gonna take to take the business out of the hole we bought it in.
I’m more so thinking of internal sharp elbowed people. Like fucking over a coworker to get ahead
I agree with this. I worked at a firm with a reputation for having sharp elbows and developed a reputation for myself as well; to be honest, it had nothing to do with being rude or unpleasant to work with/for, it was just assertiveness and making hard decisions. Sometimes those decisions resulted in people getting fired or enforcement on an asset, but so what...it was the right thing to do. If you are an asshole people will not want to work for you and the sell side will not show you things. There is no reason to be an asshole, and I don't think that's what having sharp elbows means. There are people out there who are assholes to everyone, and that is not a good reputation to have; this would be different than having "sharp elbows".
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