SAC Capital vs. Other Hedge Funds

I would define SAC's competitive set as the equity-driven multi-manager platforms. They all run high levels of leverage offset by very tight risk controls (i.e. drawdown stops and minimal beta leeway). Millennium, Citadel GE, Surveyor, Balyasny, Carlson, Visium, etc. Each team runs as an autonomous mini hedge fund with their own strategy. Most of the funds have a structure where best ideas can be raised up into a "big book".

SAC's main advantage over its competitors is its superior fee structure (3/50 in the days when they ran outside capital). Thus payouts for their teams are generally bigger than competing shops. For this reason, they historically got great talent, although I would imagine that the controversy has made things more difficult. On the negative side, SAC was famous for having a very cutthroat culture where everyone hated each other.

Taking a step back, there are pros and cons of the multi-manager model vs. single-manager. Multi-manager shops are great in that everyone gets to be a PM. Senior analysts also have a lot of discretion and are basically running their own mini-books within their sectors. People can do very well and get paid. The flipside is that there is zero buffer if you don't perform. The door is constantly revolving. At each of these firms, there are a handful of big teams that consistently crush it, and everyone else kind of gets churned and burned, because they don't 1) have a strong investment process and 2) get enough scale to do well (i.e. hiring enough analysts to do deep work and getting cross leverage). When you go to management meetings, you can tell who is coming from the multi-manager shops because they are usually the ones asking detailed modeling questions (trees over the forest).

Single-manager shops generally do much deeper work and have the capital base to take the heat on concentrated long-term positions. Greenlight and Pershing Square, the two that you mentioned, fall into this category. Working at places like that will give you a more stable career trajectory (not to say that consistent performance isn't paramount, but there is more rope when compared to a multi-manager shop, especially once you've proven yourself). Single manager shops offer much better training because hiring someone is more of an investment for them. Realistically, most analysts at a single manager shop will never become a PM themselves. That doesn't mean that they can't become respected investors that have a lot of discretion within their area of expertise. At some shops analysts can make equal or more than PMs at multi-manager shops. It really depends. Hedge funds are not standardized like the sell-side. Some shops pay much more than others for an equal level of performance, there is a certain level of randomness to it, when looking from the outside.