Too early to join a pod?
Juggling an offer from a MM after ~1.5 years experience in sell-side research.
Under an II rated analyst so I can't imagine not getting offers in the future, but current opportunity would be to join a decently established pod.
In what you've seen, do I have enough experience to be successful?
Thanks in advance.
bump
You should have the modeling skills but you clearly don’t believe in yourself which is the bigger issue. If you can’t do that you can’t have conviction in a trade and then you shouldn’t go buyside
OK prospect.
It's not about confidence, it's about thinking critically about your career from a bigger picture.
This account is years old, I work at a pod. Confidence in taking swings is crucial. You see all the time smart people who do good work but never feel comfortable actually making trades and so they churn out of the industry without ever building a coverage or track record
You got cooked by a “prospect” lmao
Are you an astronaut or an astronomer?
lol what’s the punch line? HF is an astronaut and ER is an astronomer?
longandshort 's question is one of the best I've seen and cuts to the root. There's no punchline. You can be successful doing both.
You are correct that HF = astronaut vs Strat/ER/SellSide/Regulator/Academics = Astronomer
If you don't understand how good this question is, or what you are, then I'd stay where you are at.
Prospect in IB is 100% correct as well.
Such a fantastic succinct question. I will be using this in the future.
Goes hard
I don’t know you, I don’t know.
It’s not about experience. People come out of undergrad and crush it. Are you ready lol?
Also what sector Jw.
Never too early, think it's more dependent on if you like the PM/team, both qualitatively and quantitatively (will you learn? Will they take care of you?)
Think in reality you're so early it doesn't really matter, no one will hold your lack of success against you this early and I imagine you'll have sell-side opportunities available to you on the other side should you not want to stay on the buy-side. But given it is early and you'd likely be foregoing a pretty strong learning opty w/ your current boss, just ensure this new gig would be a step up in learning opportunity
Have some family members who have been successful on the buyside and their advice is unanimous: Don’t leave before two years at the minimum — they assume anyone trying to leave before then is trying to do so because they are unable to hack it on the sell-side.
Additionally, if you leave before you have 2 years experience to a MM / you get blown out within a year (possibly for reasons outside of your control) — your career prospects in public markets will be very grim.
IMO the risk-reward of this career move at the current time is quite bad / would improve materially if you stayed another 6-12 months.
Couldn't disagree more
The notion that he got an offer on the buy-side entirely dispels the notion that he'd be unable to hack it on the sell-side. If we agree the normal flow of talent is sell-side --> buy-side then the correct assumption by those speculating on an early sell-side departure would be that he crushed it, again contingent on the quality of the buy-side team they join
Buy-side prospects assuming you blow out are only grim if 1) you stink and 2) you don't have a decent network. All of my peers at MMs have found employment elsewhere within 12 months at the very maximum and as I mentioned above the OP is young enough that no one is penalizing them personally if their group blows out
You’re not disagreeing with a dumb sellside monkey, you’re disagreeing with 3 managers who all run $1b+ — one of which used to run the largest book at SAC (now p72). If you leave a job before the 2 year mark, then last under a year at your next job it’s just not a good look, period. WSO consensus basically looks at what paid out well over the past couple years and assumes those are the best seats to be in. Could going to the pods ASAP work out and be the best decision you’ve ever made? Sure. But to say that experience will help you get another job if you get blown out is laughable.
Iirc the pods returned $10b+ of capital last year — this means the AUM growth of the MMs is constrained by people, not by the pockets of LPs.
Hence, the bar for getting hired at the pods is actually pretty low — but proving you are able to run money like that sustainably is difficult. Said differently, the jobs are easy to get, but hard to keep. The pods started calling myself / my peers aggressively after the ~1 year mark and it’s fairly understood as long as you’re a solid associate w/ 1+ years exp — if you want to go to the MMs, you can.
Above advice is outdated by at least 5 years
With the influx of capital/talent the bar to getting a decent seat (i.e. not under a new PM) is only getting higher. See the other threads on some PMs preferring/only wanting people from IB/2+2 instead of sellside research etc, wouldn’t be surprised at all if this continues as more of the previous generation’s top investors (ex-Tiger etc) move to set up at pods. Realistically no one is going to credit you for an incremental 6mo/1yr of sellside experience so if you feel comfortable with the PM I would move now.
In theory sure, but I have plenty of friends on the sellside still getting frequent HH outreach about pods hiring. Are they good seats? Maybe not, but getting your foot in the door is still relatively straightforward granted you’re not a moron.
HH will literally ping anybody in IB/ER to ‘tag’ themselves onto you when you’re introduced to bizdev, who may or may not actually have a seat for you to interview for at any given moment
End of the day it’s not like MMs have expanded the industry even with their higher churn so getting into HF is as easy/hard as it always was and there is such a thing as too senior (>4yoe imo) so if OP has an offer from a good PM why wait
Thanks for the amazing feedback y'all.
The seat I'm looking at is with a more established pod (~2 years and growing) and under a new-ish senior Analyst within the team.
Doing my dd on the individual / team as well but my biggest worry is definitely job security and the high churn I keep reading about.
I'm confident in my own performance, but what leads to the churn and younger folks losing their seats?
Is it just the PM blowing up?
It’s largely because of pod blow ups yes. I’ve seen analysts specifically get canned because they couldn’t actually deliver what they were claiming to do so, or taking too long to learn the process and start providing value above replacement
~2 years is not particularly established imo, it’s better than the brand new PM though. You will see a lot of PMs at this stage start to blow up as AUM scales and strategies start getting picked off, you also have PMs being forced to cover new verticals and names they do not have the same expertise in which adds to this pressure. That being said, I’d take the opportunity, it’s still a better entry situation and if all goes well, you’re in a great position.
Literally go on LinkedIn and see how many PMs are doing 2-3 year stints and bouncing around multiple firms.
Huh, that's pretty reflective of what this PM has been doing, bouncing 2-3 years at each MM, coming up on his fourth year in his current role.
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