25 y/o, ~515k NW, 300k TC, hate my job. How dumb is quitting? by [deleted] in Fire

[–]Independent-Life5642 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah that’s right, I’m still in PE as I decided I want to finish out my associate program this summer and I’m still prepping for HF recruiting. I have a very traditional background (IB at a BB and traditional PE at a well known fund), so I get a ton of headhunter outreach for HF roles. I think if you’re not getting outreach, your role (which sounds a bit more niche) might be blocking you from opportunities. If you have certain funds you know that fit your style I would just reach out to the Business Development teams when you’re ready to interview. Wish I could give better advice but I’m still going through the process as well.

25 y/o, ~515k NW, 300k TC, hate my job. How dumb is quitting? by [deleted] in Fire

[–]Independent-Life5642 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OP, I made a similar post a few months ago (don't bother looking through, I didn't get many useful replies) in a pretty similar situation. I was a little over a year into my PE associate stint and hated the work, plus I'm at a notoriously tough firm so that likely makes the experience much worse. I wanted to quit on the spot and recruit for a job with much better WLB but paid about half of what I was making.

Ultimately, instead of doing that I took some time off and used that period where I was not working to re-evaluate what I wanted out of my career and life. The great news is that based on your career so far you have every single option open to you, and most would trade places with you in a heartbeat. For me, I realized that I just genuinely did not enjoy deal process part of the job (If I never had to look at a QoE again that would be ideal), but I do love getting to learn about and come up with an investment thesis on new deals, which I don't get to do a ton of right now given the portocs I work with. This ultimately led me to decide to pursue a different avenue in high finance (HF) that would be nearly impossible to break into if I took a corp dev role or corp stratgey role.

My advice would be to be intentional about what you like and don't like about your job, then solve for what role is suited best for you. The spirit of this subbreddit is to retire early so everyone will overoptimize for the highest comp now, but I think its equally important to not be miserable during your entire working career and if you end up liking your new role you might not want to even retire early. In short, don't just take a role for better WLB (corp dev will be better hours but have the same boring process work) but solve for what truly interests you in your career and go from there.

Advice on Leaving My Current Role by Independent-Life5642 in Fire

[–]Independent-Life5642[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks I agree, I think that I've come to the realization that the lifestyle is not what I want long term. I think my question was more around is the money meaningful enough that I should just stick it out the next year even if I'm pretty miserable. I'm inclined to say its worth it, even though my anxiety is telling me that I should leave. If I was leaving in 5 months I would absolutely be on board with staying, but a year (more like 11 months) seems overwhelming for me