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Big Law, but oh you said WLB....NVM
Pls rank big law firms. Also, will any hire undergrads?
What are my exit opps after big law?? (I'm at a top 23 firm)
^this, literally LOLing
The reverse of Big LaW is WLB.
That's what I was going for hahahaha. My ex use to work 85+ and slept many nights there if she slept.
One can dream of doing corporate law in big law as a Senior Partner that is highly recruited. Seeing those people wander around in jeans on a Tuesday was always entertaining. Cases so big they'll never go to trial.
Director and above level at a top LifeCo.
It'll just take you 25 years to get there.
Who ever said anything about earning that much by just climbing the corporate ladder? Plenty of people come externally.
Can someone tell me what top 15 firms I get most carry in deals on my summer internship?
Get offers and then work with that
Marcus & Millichap
s
Shit I hope I can hire someone like me for what I get paid when I go out on my own
What hedge fund?
Hah. This is like the argument that poorer Americans don't want taxes to go up on the wealthy because they imagine they'll be there one day, and don't want higher taxes on their hypothetical future selves. I would also argue that the range of what you do in real estate varies greatly, and that might also have some impact on pay. As is repeated ad nauseum here, if you work in debt origination or investment sales, you might make hundreds of thousands of dollars really early if you enter the industry at the right time. You might also have years where you barely pay back your draw. So it is hard to compare some of these feast-or-famine roles with steadier gigs. But the average teenager or college student posting on these boards doesn't really care about that, they want to know how to be Jonathan Gray as quickly as possible, without understanding that just won't happen again, or not in the same way.
Moreover, even if you're a project manager in a development role, you might be willing to take a smaller salary if you actually have responsibility. Yes, your peer in acquisitions at a major fund might be making double what you are, but if you're "the guy" running a couple development deals without someone looking over your shoulder, you might be gaining experience for an eventual move into your own thing - an exit that someone doing acquisitions at a $10b AUM can't really count on, because no one is giving that guy the kind of money to run the kinds of deals he's got experience with. If I buy Class A, 9 figure trophy office properties in major urban areas as my W-2 job, how am I going to replicate that if I want to start my own fund? Whereas if I spend my time building multifamily housing for a developer, I have a very reasonable chance of finding someone to finance my project if I can gain site control.
None of which is to say that any of us should be suckered into the "but it's great experience!" bullshit argument as a substitute for good pay, but there are good reasons why experienced CRE professionals might stay in a role that is underpaying them by 10-15% or whatever if they've found a good stepping stone.
I work at a mid sized but reputable fund and make close to $300k with only 5 years of experience. I occasionally leave work early on fridays, I play intramural sports, go on dates, etc on weekdays. We only work the occasional weekend when there’s a big push up to investment committee
What’s the catch? I’m on the west coast. The NYC guys grind like there’s no tomorrow and they 1) put the same amount of equity to work as the west coast team and 2) get paid the same
If you want to have a life, get out of NYC. People there work even if they’re not busy.
Great take, the standard I’ve found at NYC shops are 9-9 with some weekend work here and there. Doesn’t matter what kind of shop most of the time. Market matters!
OMG is this true... I realized this soon after moving to NY and seeing it in real life, expected it was the case beforehand. Like the hours in NYC are total bullshit, 80% of those who stay past 8pm could legit leave at 5pm with zero loss of productivity!
Need to know what fund this is...
I promise you this is not specific to my fund. There are just more chill MDs on the west coast. So go to an “intense” shop like Brookfield, but their west coast office. Get paid the same as NYC and enjoy the 18 hours of sunlight every day
This is a legit great post!
I will say, the UGs, interns, and others on the outside looking in can basically only fully grasp pay and prestige..... actual work quality, excitement, life outside of the office, even real prospects of career progression... are all concepts I don't think people grasp until 25 or maybe even 30! Soooo.. let's rank by pay and prestige!
Will say... getting north of $300k in one's 30s (and certainly 40s) in NYC or even secondary cities doesn't seem that impossible in a lot of institutional/corporate roles that also allow one to have a life. I'd think successfully "climbing the ladder" (to use the worn out phrase) is probably what most who get to that level do, or have some successful professional practice that is "controlled" enough to allow for life balance (like appraisers, consultants, accountants, and even some lawyers and brokers.....). Of course, "deciding" to have a "life" probably has costs vs. those willing to go 80-90 hrs+, but that is part of it right? Accepting say $350k total comp when you could make the run for $750-1M!
Ironically, it seems like a lot of those who have that set up (be it in NYC or elsewhere), had to do shitty jobs or tracks in their 20s (like made well under the $200k threshold potentially) to be in the comfortable zone in their 30s. I'd note appraisers and bankers (commercial not investment) fit this model quite often. Or as others say, promoted up the proverbial "LifeCo/pension fund/SWF" tracks as an institutional example. Thus, if you hit your 30s and wish you had taken that path, then may be hard to shift without another 10 years of suckiness. But maybe can jump right into based on experience/skills (hard to say, too personal to generalize).
I interviewed for role in OC that a recruiter brought me too. Major Fund looking for an within their acquisitions/AM arm, Associate level with 3 years of exp and they were quoting ~275-300k all in.
Didnt get it…
Dang PIMCO has been pinging me for that one, might have to throw my hat in the ring
Funny I think everyone has heard about that PIMCO role. I heard hours on their team are intense though. Normally California shops are way more chill but there is always a trade off with comp / life balance. I am not recruiting but I like keeping track of what is going on in the industry. The company I am at is usually 40 hours per week, make 97k base, 20-30% bonus with 1 to 1.5 years of experience. Overall I love my team but wish I made slightly more because it's hard to survive when the government steals a third. My rent is 3k which is just over 50% over my post tax per month income. If I add my gym, car payment, gas, insurance, cable/wifi, groceries, I'm living paycheck to paycheck.
It's hilarious how when you are in college you think making $120-130k is amazing and then you get older and reality sets in
What type of hours would that be?
J.P. Morgan
DM me please.
For what???
"I'm tired of top pay questions. but here is my top pay question for someone with 10+ years of experience." LOL
Yeah, 300k to 500k, not really top pay for 10+ YOE.
But I have found, no matter where you go in NYC, even family offices people want you to work 12-16 hour days for not top pay.
$500K at 10 years is good, but agree it's not top pay. I am in the range of age & comp that you speak of and I do not consider myself top pay by any means. I guess if you prefaced you were looking for great work-life and still make good money, I would have thought of the ? differently.
BX first years making 300k all in
😂😂😂😂😂
I'm mid 30's at a PE firm = $1.3mm cash comp, $10mm carry.
hours? and wait, you in RE?
This sounds like corporate PE but also comp like that is possible in RE. Look at some of the mid 30 MDs at the $1billion+ opportunity funds
Sorry, this is buyout PE, not real estate. hours are 60 hours a week.
Does your firm need analysts lol
u guys hiring???
I’m just an intern, but I feel like capital markets roles like ECM or DCM can make 300-500 after 10 years of experience and still have a life
yeah you're also fucked when IPO markets are down 90% y/y similar to right now... lot of VP+ in ECM going to be first ones canned this cycle
Enterprise Software
and you get all of the WLB
lol wtf 500k after 10YOE is terrible. MF PE is already close to 400k with 3YOE.
Notice they said “and have a life” there’s plenty of places in RE that pay 300-350 for associates but you normally don’t have a life
wow RE must suck. can literally think of so many seats that exist like that. Anything that is markets facing gives you a life with that sort of income. S&T, any investing AM seat, even a shitty HF seat.
I wanna see how you finance chumps are doing. Step up to the plate if you have the chops to battle against a decent SWE TC these days. Anyone beat 550k TC at 25 years old? Must be all cash, no paper money.
lol you don’t even say how many YOE. SWE on 550k is jokes. Maybe there are a few outliers but those numbers don’t exist in the tech world very much anymore. So many SWE’s get their TC in stock which if you haven’t noticed yet, is doing trash this year. so I don’t buy your 550k grad all cash number unless you are including one offs.
25 years old = 3 YOE. No, definitely not the norm, but this website is not the norm either. That's why I'm inviting any finance bro on WSO to step up. Any of the elite boutique dudes or the PE MM guys or some HF analyst at a tiger cub or something. I'm just curious what the heavy hitters look like here - I spend most of my time on Blind these days. And several of my close friends and acquaintances in my social circle hit that number and even exceed, but all of them work for HFT's/Hedge Funds in non-infra, alpha-generating roles (but still in an engineering capacity so they consider themselves SWE's or Quant Dev's). Pay is cold, hard greenbacks, none of that RSU nonsense.
Very few in tech make an all cash compensation that high with 3YOE.
Definitely. I don't disagree. My implication was that we were talking about the best of the best here. Tons of quant make 7 figures in their mid 20s so I decided to be nice and lower the bar a bit.
I don’t even have a side on this sub-thread but your original comment has me fucking weak
Lmao I reread it and it is pretty funny. Sounds like I'm a Pokémon gym trainer or something
Does 400k - 500K for 10 - 5 where I can show up in tshirts, flip flops and jeans I have been wearing all week count?
If so, go work for a family office.
This is the best gig I've seen so far
To be fair, my role is radically more diverse than just CRE. I do pretty much everything as I have backgrounds in CRE (acquisitions and development), PE and real estate fixed income. So it might not be the most common pay structure, however I tried to get similar comp packages from the big CRE shops and they were open but wanted a ton more work.
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