CIM Group - Current culture?

Considering a senior role on their LA Development team.

Anyone have recent exposure to the company culture? Heard they went through a bit of a washout phase the past couple of years and were known as a sweatshop for a while. 

Anyone got any inside info? 

26 Comments
 

I really enjoy working on the development team. Have made many close friends/profesional relationships with folks on the development, investments and leasing teams. If you like working on a high volume of projects, a variety of asset classes, and a wide range in capitalization (from $5m retail repositionings to $100M+ mixed-use projects), you will enjoy it. A few other considerations: In LA, CIM has an in-house construction team and does not hire GCs for any projects. Also, unlike other traditional developers I have worked for, CIM has a large large private equity business and you will have exposure to interesting debt transactions and LP investments, in addition to your development projects.

 

Lol they pay associates in the PE group $175k base and $125k bonus. These are kids with 18-24 months of experience after college. This is a real data point from someone I know.

From what I understand about senior level comp at PE firms. Base salary never really gets that high. It’s all in the carry / bonus. That’s how it works at my company. Some people’s base barely changes between associate and VP. But bonus goes way up 

 

Never talked to their LA team, but I interviewed for a different team of theirs. Thought it would be a dream to work on their projects. 

Turned out to be the only interview process I removed myself from due to how toxic even the interviews were. 

Commercial Real Estate Developer
 
Yakehito

I heard something like out of all their vintages they’ve never been in the carry. That it’s a money-raising, fee-clipping machine, but that all speculative, risky development and rehab deals they have done go sideways etc and so the fund level returns have never been great. Anyone have color on that? Was told to me by an ex employee.

I feel like that is 90% of developers in general these days unless you built in like the 90's or early 2000's and held on, or had some truly secret sauce and perfect timing.  

 

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