What does weekend work typically consist of in PE in terms of hours worked and deliverables needed by Sunday night / Monday morning? How often are your Friday nights or Saturdays getting blown up? Able to wake up hungover on Sunday w/o getting blasted with work? (I.e., "Here are some items I'm tracking for today" email)
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I’m in a good group, but I rarely have work Friday nights or Saturday nights (1-2 times a year). Most of weekend work in PE falls into either catching up or live intense deal working towards preempting a process.
MF / UMM or smaller firm? Approx size?
MF
Good luck if you work at Apollo. From WSJ:
"Some of those people remain unconvinced of Mr. Harris’s ability and willingness to take steps required to modernize the firm. He regularly dominated investment committee meetings, hammering young analysts about their financial models, former employees say. Not replying right away to a Saturday morning email from Mr. Harris would yield a response 10 minutes later of “?”. And he frustrated people with his iterative decision-making process, sometimes taking a year to decide not to do something."
Everything you hear about Apollo just makes it sound worse and worse. Rapist founders, deplorable culture, Epstein connections, loathed counterparty for tons of banks. It’s an utterly disgusting firm. But hey, they pay well so folks line up by the thousands to sell their souls to Apollo.
how was it under Leon? I can kinda see why people would prefer Rowan if Harris was that bad.
Is it fair to assume for analysts and associates at MFs that weekend work is commonplace?
yes
I think it’s fair to assume any finance job (IB, PE, HF), you work on the weekends.
At an MM and typically have 3-4 hrs each of Saturday and Sunday when things are calm and no difference between weekday and weekend when on a later stage live deal. It gets to be a grind when you’ve wrapped up an intense process but still can’t get a day off.
Wondering if this is generally typical or if people have had different experiences. Contemplating a move, but not sure if I’m in a grass is greener mentality and it’ll be more of the same.
For context, has been far, far worse than banking.
Definitely don’t think every shop is like that. What’s approx fund size? Also is this nyc?
$1-2b latest fund in 3rd tier city
Man... this is definitely my normal at a $1bn fund
Wow, so typically you basically don’t even get a single day truly “off”. I wonder how long can one keep doing this. Do you get yearly vacays or anything of the kind?
$10bn+ fund probably work weekend once every other month
Living the dream. Typical hours during the week?
9-10pm for most days. When deals are hot expect it to be 9-1am but those weeks are probably once every 6-8 weeks.
Can't complain, will be coming back as a Sr. Associate post MBA stint
Would people mind tossing out some names of firms where weekend work (i.e 3-4 hours each every Saturday and Sunday) might not be as big of a thing? UMM and MM in NYC firms like this would be good to know. Interested in PE and am currently at GS / MS and not allergic to working a lot but just don't want to work away my 20s completely.
3rd year associate, $1.5B latest fund in NYC.
Probably 4-6 hours of work every Sunday, maybe the same on a Saturday once a month. Usually kill my laptop at 6pm on Friday and don’t log back on the rest of the night, often not again until Sunday afternoon. Maybe twice a month I need to respond to an email while out Fri/Sat night, but can usually do so quickly from my phone.
Working until the early hours of the morning on the weekend happens maybe every 2-3 months, but might be a few nights at a time or multiple weekends in a row (during live deals).
Overall, lots of flexibility but when it rains it pours. Some line of sight to improvement - the VPs I’m staffed with usually aren’t online much over the weekends unless we have something going on, though when we do they’re still on with me until 2-3am. Interestingly, the principals seem to work a lot more on the weekends - unclear if survivorship bias or if they’re trying to stand out while gunning for partner (probably some of both).
Any noticeable difference in family profile between VP and principals? I find people with young families tend to put a few hours in on the weekend as they can't work through from morning to night weekdays unless they decide to spend no time with their kids / spouse. In contrast, those without kids tend to work hard during the week to free up their weekend. YMMV.
Interesting observation - no VPs are married whereas all prinicipals are (all principals have kids except one, who plans to have them soon)
Bump
At an LMM ($400-750mm) and work maybe 1 weekend a month. Even then is usually just catching up on reading some CIMs for an hour or two. Pretty much shut the laptop down at 6pm on Fridays outside of deal sprints.
What's pay look like?
$225k all in. In the southeast
As others have said, on a live deal sprint all bets are off. Otherwise Sundays are usually prep work for Mondays/the upcoming week and Saturday is the spillover/catch-up day from during the week, which is usually due to traveling restricting ability to actually review/get to deliverables.
Is this weekend work self managed (ie I can choose when to do it) or is it like banking where my VP wants it by Sunday night so need to get it to associate Sunday morning for review
Assuming it isn't a live deal then generally at your own leisure, people generally expect a finished work product (whatever that may be) to review/hit their inbox by 10-11am morning Monday
As for handling weekend work, maybe try to set some boundaries? I know it’s easier said than done, especially in private equity, but carving out even a few hours for yourself can make a big difference. Maybe mix in some exercise or a hobby you dig – it’s all about finding those little escapes to keep you sane.
At a UMM / MF known for better culture but super lean deal teams mean 15-16 hour days + 10-25 hours (total) on the weekends. Big difference even within my own fund between teams that staff with multiple jrs + VP + Principal vs. 1 jr + VP...that's usually a good proxy
That is an absolutely booty trash schedule
Wtf this is slave driving bro. Get the fuck out of that place - sounds genuinely terrible
this is pretty intense, but unfortunately this is a lot more common than you would ever think.
Senior Associate at ~$600mm fund, NYC. Seldom do I work weekends. Every Sunday evening I'll spend ~90 minutes cleaning inbox / updating admin stuff / etc. but I hardly count that as work. Usually can do that while watching football / cooking / etc. I would say every ~2-3 months do I seriously work on a weekend, and 98% of the time it's tied to a live deal we're closing in 30 days. I find I'm able to have good control of my schedule because I know when deals are closing / bids are due / port co CEOs are visiting (i.e., a deck needs to be prepped for their visit) / port co BoD meetings well enough ahead of time that it doesn't really require weekend work (if you can manage your schedule well enough and things don't pop up). However, of course there is always that VP / Principal who wants you to put together something low value-add on a Saturday morning so he can present to the Partner that 'he's thinking about it this way instead'. But, that's very person specific and can usually find an easy 'excuse' to why you'll do it Sunday night and not ruin your Friday / Saturday because of that silly task. For reference, been in my seat for two years and have yet to have a weekend trip / wedding / birthday / vacation blown up or wrecked in any material way due to work (knock on wood).
What ‘excuse’ to come up with?? Asking for a friend(actually for myself pls pls pls!!!)
In my experience, you just have to play these conversations the right way to maximize your chances, and it's never really guaranteed. Here's a method that tends to work:
1. Sus deliverable is first brought up that you KNOW isn't urgent: act engaged and talk about it, and specifically what it's for, what they think it'll help (in a curious tone). Then when they do their lil self-rationalizing bullshit about how it'd be interesting to see in blah blah context, delicately phrase it back to them like, "got it, so it's helpful for XYZ, but really an ancillary thing." The first step is level setting with them to ensure that they know that you know exactly how non-urgent this is. Sometimes them saying it out of their own mouths will help soften the timeline
2. After you've established a mutual understanding of just how BS this is, proactively propose a timeline for Monday morning, vaguely say you're busy
3. If there's pushback, reluctantly talk about some stupid family thing you gotta do. Then if this doesn't work, say you have a few hours of work for another deal team that is on a shorter fuse. If that also doesn't apply to you, say you're best man for a wedding. Just anything that's relatable enough that if the person has an ounce of empathy they might reconsider
4. If none of the above works, go talk shit about them to every associate in your class that you're close to, suck it up, and wait for review season I guess
Also, don't do this if it's an actual senior person...
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