What's the definition of 'good hours' in PE?
Feel like it's clear what sweat shop means but unclear as to what monkeys mean when they say good hours. Taking a guess, it means:
- ~60 - 70 hours (or 50 - 60 hours?) when not on a live deal
- ~80 - 90 hours when on a live deal
Still seems like a lot of hours
I think I have good hours and I average about 60-65 hours a week. 12 hour days Monday through Thursday, ~10 hours on Friday, and a few hours here and there on the weekend.
That is very good. Is that the same during live deals too? I imagine not?
Yeah, during a live deal (and when I say live I mean under LOI) it's about 85 hours a week. 95% of the deals we look at are proprietary so we rarely have time pressure from auction processes.
If you're trying to figure out if your life is going to get better in the PE world, it'll really depend on the type of firm you're headed to. From my experience, there are way less fire drills but you still gotta put in the hours.
Can you expand more on “the type of firm you’re headed to”. Are you referring to specific strategies, sectors, or fund sizes having better hours than others?
Can you hire me
At a high 9 figure fund, hours range from about 60-70 when you're not on a live deal to 90-100 when working on a new platform. Teams are usually pretty lean - during deals Partner handles the relationship with management, Principal or VP runs with QBing the deal, and an Associate grinds on the analysis / 3rd party diligence management.
I've found the portco management to be most draining. If you cover 3-4 companies and they don't have strong financial leadership, as an associate you're essentially the outsourced FP&A. Add that to preparing presentations for c-19 lender negotiations, running with add-on sourcing / management calls, building out sales functions, turning NDAs, quarter end reporting... the little stuff adds up quickly.
Surprised you're running into being outsourced FP&A even on larger deals. What size are the deals where you've into that?
I see it a lot in the $5M - $30M range but I feel like around $20M - $30M companies tend to pick up a somewhat competent CFO?
You would think! I have seen a $200M revenue company still using quickbooks and no CFO.
Surprisingly not. Worked on a ~$150mm sellside once where the CFO had created their own language of accounting in which balance sheets didn't "need" to balance. Shit you not. The CFO did not have a CPA and was a childhood friend of the founders of the company. Got away with being incredibly incompetent because of how far back they went.
Didn't stop the founders from building a great company. Big props. I still twitch over thoughts of working on that deal, though.
Having a bad CFO, or lacking one entirely, also makes some of the other things you mentioned that much more painful (quarter end reporting, hiring processes, AR/AP/vendor management, add-on activity).
My favorite portco is probably the business which I find the least interesting, simply because the CFO is outstanding. He is so competent and responsive that I wish I could have our other CFO’s shadow him for a week. The guy is razor sharp and I hope gets more equity as the platform grows.
Just out of curiosity, what's the guy's background like?
I thought my hours were very good at my last shop. Lower middle market (investing out of a ~$600 million fund). I worked 10-12 or so hours a day during the week, smattering of hours on the weekend. Would guess 55-65 hours a week. When on the intense part of a live deal (even during a deal work ebs and flows), yes it could ramp up to 75-80 (or more) hours a week, but still nothing crazy. I considered these to be very good hours. I've never had an all-nighter. I had hobbies outside of work.
What was comp like in LMM?
The Heidrick & Struggles survey provides a response that is more meaningful than my anecdotal evidence. Would look at that for reference.
Not to hijack the thread but what are some ways to get a feel for the hours? Is it best to speak with associates / former associates? Are there any other tell-tale signs?
I feel like a lot of firms are pretty up-front about it. There's no point hiring someone just to have them churn out quickly.
No firm trying to hire people is going to outright say their hours suck, especially associates - either because they need support or because it would look really bad if you drop out of the process after speaking with them.
Two things you can look at are the number of deals they close in a year and number of portfolio companies per deal team member (or per number of people at the level you're going for)
I found hours to be typically 9am to 10 or 11pm M-F, with 2-4 hrs per day on each of Sa/Su.
If there's live deals of course, forget off time on weekends, and you can expect the hours to stretch M-F until whenever work is done.
9am to 8pm M-T, 9-5 F, some weekend work (When not on a live deal)
Those sound like ideal hours. What strategy/size range shop if you don't mind sharing?
Mostly growth, family office
Can anyone give the perspective from one of the large cap PE firms (BX, KKR, TPG, etc.)? Might be helpful to have that as a point of comparison.
As an associate at one of the firms listed:
Mo-Th: 9:00 AM - midnight
Friday: 9:00 AM - 7:30 PM
Sat / Sun: could really vary, but normally at a minimum 3-4 hours spread across both days
During the middle of a deal or if you have overlapping deals, hours of course get worse
Damn, just continues IB analyst hours. I've heard PE hours are worse even if they're less because there's no down time, what do you think?
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