Why private equity practice vs. general practice?

Assuming the above responses are for the US, I'll provide a bit of a UK view (going off of the geo tag having UK in your post).

PE practice

• hours: 55-60h is our office average, with of course certain cases going to 65+, but these are generally 20% of total for us, based on the last 12 months of DDs I've seen
• work: we do mostly CDDs indeed, but you also have VDDs (same but for the sell-side, meaning typically longer and better access to company data, but also more politics), ODDs or Ops DDs (looking at operational impact of CDD synergy plan), and post-acquisition strategy work (these are usually longer and vary quite a bit)
• pros:
  • repeatable toolkit (you tend to do the same 4-5 things every time: market modelling, competitive positioning, customer analysis/survey, VCP/synergy plan)
  • short cases (2-4 weeks usually, unless VDD or post-ac)
  • very well-defined scope during cases (PE clients know exacrtly what they want and expect you to get to the point quickly)
  • predictable hours (more below)
  • exposure to large number of industries in short time (caveat that many will be tech/healthcare related)
  • little to no travel (you move only if co-locating with your team, in case you're spread over several offices, even then it's usually not necessary)
• cons:
  • long hours (you definitely know you'll have 2-3 finishes past 10pm, sometimes near or past midnight, but you won't get blindsided with sudden scope changes/client requests last minute)
  • low variety in types of work (since you do the same thing over and over again)
  • usually little to no exposure to clients for presentation / working on client skills (it can vary based on the client and the Partners though)

General practice

• hours: ~55h (our office avg; I'm also in that neighbourhood but I have seen cases go way above 65h+ in some instances, for multiple consecutive weeks)
• work: anything and everything under the strategy Sun (depending on your firm's or office's specialisation of course)
• pros:
  • usually lower hours (although it depends entirely on your client & partners on the project)
  • variety in types of projects (you can do cost reduction / pure strategy / market entry / post-merger improvement / etc.)
  • client exposure (you can hone your client mgmt skills over time quite nicely)
• cons:
  • hours can be unpredictable (if your client suddenly wants to see a whole new analysis by next steer co in 2 days, that's on you to make it happen)
  • travel (can be a big negative when it's weekly and makes you wake up at 4am every Monday)
  • less varied exposure to industries than PE practices (although you can still see a few different ones, but fewer due to the longer project durations)