WLB in PE 2026?
How’s everyone’s work life balance been in PE this year so far? Has a slowdown in deal activity lead to less hours and weekend work?
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Lmao
Parkinson’s Law is strong in PE
The only people I know with good WLB are those at zombie funds; but culture at those firms are also shot and everyone is also all scared of getting fired. Very hard to lateral from a zombie fund too since they do no deals and everyone knows what the zombie funds are. Generally, if a team is growing and/or runs lean relative to fund size (the type of firms that would promote people), WLB isn't really a thing.
What would be considered lean for a deal team ( i.e. 15 people manage $2B)? Is there a certain ratio?
Yeah. Everyone I know at decent places have been getting cranked. There’s always more work to do.
Probably averaging 90 this year. Working every weekend
How are you not burnt? You looking to leave? Stay in PE or corporate?
Probably averaging 70-75 at a ~$1B fund. Spikes up to 80-90 aren’t uncommon and feel like comp is a hair below market so I’m not thrilled. Came from a “lifestyle” bank and considering going back somewhere similar as a VP-track associate in 1-2 years if I have the optiob
How is the lifestyle in London? Also sweaty, like working every weekend?
Was at a MM fund doing 80+ hour weeks with very few deals getting done. A lot of portco messes to clean and chased down processes where we had no shot and got smoked consistently on valuation.
How people do this for decades dealing with CFOs that can barely use excel and Partners living over their shoulder is mind blowing. The AI slop board deck that I had to completely rework overnight because the numbers included by mgmt were just incorrect was the final straw for me.
What are you up to now?
If you're working 80+ hour weeks as an associate, you are incompetent with AI
Bear the awful hours for 1 year, make a bag, and then move to Burundi and retire with endless purchasing power.
So basically nobody found a way to work less by leveraging agentic AI?
Same issue as SWE. All gains just mean firms fire people because 1 person who is able to at least prompt well if not use agentic AI well is more productive. If you are a banker or PE person who doesn't use AI, you are behind. Also some firms simply don't have anything outside of Co-pilot, especially the older MM or UMM firms, most of those will likely be dead as they fail to adapt to productivity gains.
It is kind of funny that you entirely misread the original comment and just went into a slop rant
Deal flow slow. Averaging 50-60 hrs a week this year.
Last year was brutal, was doing consistent 90s all year so this has been a very nice change of pace.
Same here, got absolutely murdered from 2023-2025 but the last 4-5 months have been pretty slow, combo of luck on staffing where things died plus a general slowdown in market deal flow. Not taking this moment for granted.
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