Let's Get Real About My Exit Opps - is the grass always greener?

After seeing all of the recent IB analyst pay increases, I have started to feel as though I am severely underpaid for the amount of work I do and the responsibilities I am given.

I graduated in the class of 2020 from a non-target school with a non-finance (but "business related") major and 3.7-3.8 GPA . Where I went wasn't necessarily bad (probably a top 50 university depending on who you ask) but has absolutely horrid IB placement - probably <10 students a year end up in banking. That said, Junior yr summer I nabbed an internship at a $10B L/S in the area. Everything looked promising in terms of converting to full-time analyst but when the market turned, my sector got crushed and the fund essentially cleaned shop. PM's were getting laid off left and right, we closed redemptions, etc. It was absolutely awful. Even through this period, they kept saying they will work to bring me on but eventually I decided it was time for me to go somewhere else since I was tired of just being an "intern" at the end of the day (at this point I had been an intern for a year and a half since I took the position Jr. yr and had freshly graduated). Conversely, since I thought I was going to convert to full-time by word of the CIO and my PM, I put all my eggs in the one basket and forewent traditional IB recruiting leaving my prospect-less when I departed.

Through a bit of networking, my resume was passed along to the CFO of an ultra-high growth tech company who wanted to build an FLDP for incoming analysts. Long story short, he took a chance on me and brought me on as the 1st "analyst" to guinea pig the program. It started incredibly exciting. I worked closely with the CFO and finance leaders around the world as well as major PM's and MD's from the worlds top banks/funds, played a substantial role (considering my lack of experience) in the companies IPO which was one of the biggest in the history of the space, and was able to rotate through all of the big corporate finance departments from GTM to FP&A to IR. All seemed awesome, but around my second rotation everything turned a bit more sour. (Note: I have been at the company for about 18 months with 6mo rotations)

Once I landed in a few of the more "core" finance departments, my workload shifted heavily. Don't get me wrong, I'm not scared of a few long hours, BUT I want to be compensated to it. A typical work day for me starts at 8am and I'm lucky if I'm done my 8pm with the majority of my day being split between excel work and meetings. Everything is focused work though and by the end of the day I'm toast. It's also not uncommon for me to pull a weekend day (I'd say maybe 2-3 weeks a month). When it's extra busy / quarter close, you can easily add 4-5 hrs onto that workload every day. All of this for a total comp package which is now LESS than most AN1 starting salaries (including accounting for an equity grant in year that actually takes 4 yrs to vest). It's not even like I take less shit too. My managers still grill me for mistakes, ping me on Friday / weekends (as you can tell by my weekend rant) / late nights with "pls fix", etc. Am I going crazy and banking is still much worse than this? I feel like I'm being taken horrible advantage of. Further, being the first FLDP member, I don't even have a cohort of peers to hang out with so on late nights, it's usually just me online suffering alone.

I want to exit but don't know where / to what. PE and L/Ss seem to only really recruit from IB/ER. IB/ER does have a ton of turnover right now but I have a pretty limited network here and don't want this to float back to my company. I also tend to choke up in technical interview. I know my sector very well and how to model Software/our abstract metrics when I actually sit down and do the work though. Maybe VC? Maybe stay? One thing I do have going for me right now is my old PM left to start a fund in the space and wants to bring me on as his first analyst with a very nice package (IB base, 10% of carry, 5% equity across the fund). That said, there's zero capital right now (so he can't pay me anything yet) and this generally seems exceptionally risky.