How long after starting a new job should you consider quitting?

Created a throwaway account to keep anonymity.

I recently started a Sr. Associate role at a new fund (think MM PE, now this) and I was convinced before starting this job that I wanted to pursue a career in PE for at least the next few years (hence the reason why I took this role), but now I'm beginning to realize taking this job may have been a mistake. Already starting to feel the effects of burn out.

Question is - how long would you guys give a job before you started looking elsewhere? I've gone through two jobs so far and feel as if I have a pretty good judge of what one will be like going forward and this job is giving me all the bad signs. Doesn't help that I interviewed through COVID and got this job on the basis of all virtual interviews (so, I never met the people I'm working with in person ahead of time).

Any thoughts or personal experiences are helpful.

 

Just start getting your options ready for the end of 2020/spring of 2021 when the economy begins to recover and more jobs open up. Dont leave now but leave when you can

 

Believe it's a combination of a firm-level and role-level. Don't know if I was really able to gauge the type of people I would be working with through the interview process (as it was all virtual) and as result have come to realize there are some difficult personalities, and I was told that my role (Sr. Asso) would be a much more thoughtful, interesting job where I would be focused on new idea/theme generation, more involved with portfolio companies (I had mentioned wanting to get more operational experience) and be more involved on driving new deals. I haven't done any of that, and instead have been relegated to tasks that would be expected of a banking analyst (turning comments to IC memos, thoughtless modeling, etc.).

 

I know the feeling. Sounds like your expectations were a bit high, but also sounds like the role is playing out pretty low. I would take "a second bite at the apple" at another firm before leaving the industry altogether.

I am considering something similar myself, and probably should remind myself of the following too -- "it's always easier to go downstream than upstream"

On the other hand, life is too short to be miserable forever, so maybe give it one more shot at another firm, and if that doesn't work out then gtfo. What would you be considering for next? Feels like we spent too long on Intense ugrad > IB > PE just to do something corpdev-esque, on the other hand sunk costs are sunk.

 
Most Helpful

There's probably a lot you should talk to your seniors about here. As someone said above you are being made to do analyst tasks but given the context of COVID what if your fund just doesn't need new ideas/theme generation right now? You could just be made to do analyst tasks because the current economy is not the environment for new ideas from a new guy and because they don't want to hire you an analyst to save in costs. That said, I'm of course picturing here the most favorable scenario. You should ask and get the real answer.

 

Sorry, just seeing this.

So, it's been a few months now and things have gotten considerably better. I've been having weekly catch-up calls with members of my team and have voiced my concerns/issues that I had when I first started. Starting to enjoy the role a bit more too, which is helpful.

It was really tough starting on such a small team during COVID, fully-remote, but it's just taken some time for me to get used to the personalities and learn how to manage.

I still don't think this will be a long-term role for me, but I'll probably stick around for a year or two and then reassess. 

 

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