Question says all. I had always assumed I would stay until Partner at a large firm but realize it may not be right for me. So, I am curious what the guys who left were thinking about when they left.
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I haven't left PE (just starting recruiting tbh) but I'd love to pass down some advice from a mentor of mine. Two main things:
1) Do you love 95% of your job?
2) Count your good, meh, and bad days. Are you having more good than bad, and not a ton of meh?
If you can answer Yes to those questions, then you should probably stick it out for right now. If you can't, then you should begin looking elsewhere, or at least start the process of leaving.
If you can answer yes to question #1, you either don’t work in a junior finance role or you’re a psycho
Bro you need a new job, you're wasting your life if you don't enjoy it.
I’d argue expecting to enjoy 95% of any entry-level job is an overly idealistic view. I see from your post history that you’ve only recently started working, but give it a year and then check around with friends in finance and other industries - would be surprised if a significant portion of them were still as excited as they were going into the job right after graduation. At the end of the day, you have little to no skills when starting entry level jobs, so you’re going to be stuck doing the bitch work (that’s what you get paid for when you don’t have skills / aren’t bringing in revenue).
Generally speaking, people don’t work in finance because of a true passion for it - there is a reason it pays so much and that’s because you’re sacrificing your time and, to a lesser extent hopefully, happiness. I feel as though banking / PE are a decent trade off in terms of pay and experience for long hours and limited free time - I never expected to be thrilled every hour of the day with the work I’m doing. That’s not to say I enjoy 0% of it, but the reality is most of the junior level work is fairly mind numbing (making pretty PPTs, spreading financials from filings in excel, etc.)
I left after about 1.5 years. My logic was PE is arguably the most "interesting" thing you can do in Finance. If I still found it mind-numbingly boring (which I did) it didn't make sense to spend any more time doing it than was necessary.
How can PE, the pinnacle of finance be “mind numbing” boring?
If that’s the case, then every job is.
Some people don’t like transactions. Put some PMs in a partner role in PE and they’d hate it. Different personalities, not everyone has to do PE.
Where’d you go?
Strategy at the same BB I did banking at. Still mind-numbingly boring, but my hours are dramatically better.
When I realized that not only would the job get worse as I moved up in terms of W/L balance but I also hated everything about the gig besides pay. I think it's a lot to ask to be fulfilled by your job/career but when I realized I'd never have time to pursue anything I was interested in outside of work (as PE is all consuming) I knew it was time to gtfo of finance.
Also realized the PE skillset wasn't very helpful for any career paths I found interesting and hit the point in my "career" where I needed to either full on commit to being a deal bro or get out before I wasn't employable in any non-finance functional roles.
Very valuable to hear, thanks for sharing. What did you end up doing?
Ended up getting my MBA (questionable value prop but no regrets) and using that to pivot into marketing role at a tech/ecomm company. TBD what the long-term play is for me but much happier with the move
This made me depressed - I want to be a partner at a mega fund and now I wonder if I will last more than 2 years
Yea I did too then I started the job and it fucking blows
Does the job actually get worse as you move up? VP's and Principals are working harder than associates?
Yes and yes (although different type of work/stress). As a VP you're stuck in this shitty spot for being ultimately responsible for mistake-free work product while also acting as the deal quarterback. Throw in more travel for portco / banker meetings (pre-covid) and generally more portco involvement, and the hours aren't that much better.
Principals have even more responsibility to source deals, manage portcos, and deal with LPs. Sure, you're not churning out slides or working through a model but you need to be on top of shit 7 days a week with way more pressure.
I once opened up a principal's outlook calendar at my firm and wanted to vomit.
As I was working through my first (and ultimately only) PE deal, I paid attention to the type of work the VP and Principal were doing and realized how boring I found it. It’s obviously an important role and requires a valuable skill set to manage a process, deal with bankers, accountants, lawyers, negotiate agreements, secure financing, etc. but it’s just so fucking boring (to me). While being an associate is ultimately grunt work, I actually enjoyed the modeling and diligence aspects. Decided that public markets are basically that full time with little to none of the process work I hated so I made the move. Also, I’m super disorganized and my EQ could use some work so I probably wouldn’t have made it past VP anyway.
How did you manage to recruit for the role and make the transition from PE to HF?
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