Can anyone provide their work experience working at an endowment?
wondering about what it’s like working there and compensation as well.
thanks,
I want to know too.
endowments are most likely investing in investment funds. So they don’t choose the stocks or bonds to buy. THey choose the people who decide what to buy.
It’s a super chill job. but of course, comp is lower as well.
It’s great work life balance for those 40 yr olds with families that previously were in hardcore finance jobs.
^ Did you axe my post!?
Endowments are the buysiders of buysiders BSDs. I have a friend at one and he has guys like Asness and Ackman calling begging to manage a chunk of the money. He’s flying around the world getting wined and dined bringing these ‘Buyside BSDs’ to their knees.
So you’re right, you’re not allocating assets, you’re allocating investment managers and negotiating the fees they charge.
As others have mentioned, it’s a really lush job – you get wined and dined a lot, and can rub elbows with many asset managers and hedge funds. Upside is capped but it’s almost invariably a much more relaxed lifestyle than working at a hedge fund. Under the VP level, your comp basically tops out around $125-150K.
The post that mostly referred to sexual body parts was axed. In Water Cooler, I might have asked myself if it was necessary to do that or not: here in the Careers section, there was no question but to get rid of it.
If there had been something else useful outside of crude anatomy references, I might just have edited the post.
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To the OP. If you like the topics of investments but don’t like the stress and killer hours, an endowment is a nice compromise. As others have said, compensation is not as lucrative as some other places, and you may get frustrated by not being able to pull the trigger on investment ideas of your own, but it does have a nice work-life balance, and - if the endowment is for an institution you approve of - you can often go home feeling good about what you do.
You will almost certainly ask yourself at some point about whether your life would have been better if you had tried for something with more difficult work hours and higher upside, but remember that just because you ask yourself those questions doesn’t automatically mean that you should have done it.
yeah you are allocating to managers. good for work life balance. but, in the end, you are just fees ontop of fees.
to me it is massively unrewarding. you spend your life watching other people make money.
Sorry bchad. I like to break it down into AF WCspeak more often than not. Popping a blue pill in a certain dressing room as an allegory to working at an endowment adds more color than the typical, “Don’t do it unless you have a top 2 mba, cfa, and successfully exit MS IB -> GS ER -> KKR PE -> Endowment.”
Thanks for all the feed back guys.
The capped upside definitely sounds like a turnoff but I guess there is that trade off though with work/life flexibility.
This area seems like it’s much easier to get into because it seems like it’s nearly impossible to get into a research position at a Fund Company.
My 2nd question is how often or how much does it help you in getting to a fund company from a large endowment? With all these people wine and dining you, you’d bound to make a lot of connections right? I see a lot of people from the pension side and consulting side go to fund companies but 90% of them end up in sales or client services which i’m sure being a director or VP in that area is highly lucrative too. But It wouldn’t satisfy my analytical side though.
Wouldn’t say it’s easier…you got some top minds working at Harvard Management Company for example so I wouldn’t pursue it with that attitude. It’s usually the other way around…people who work at funds then go into investment consulting or an instutition generally specializing in allocating to the types of managers in the asset class they worked in…they move for the work/life balance. You’re best chance of ending up at a shop from an endowment is at a FoF, basically just doing more manager due diligence. Although you meet a lot of people and listen to their strategies you’re not actually building any skills that you can put to work at their business. So if you actually want to be on the buyside, I wouldn’t recommend this route…finishing CFA and going to bschool is probably your best bet.
Agree. Not sure if OP wants to be on the buyside doing research though. Maybe this suits him.
IMO manager selection is not as much as skill as people say it is skill. It’s more luck. How many great ‘manager selectors’ can you name? I will say you may learn how to sidestep landmines, but to really outperform? I have my doubts.
I don’t think it’s a sustainable skill. Just because you picked the best managers during the last 3 years doesn’t mean you will continue to pick the best managers going forward.
thanks for the feedback
I definitely am more intrigued at the buyside analyst jobs out there. But why is the MBA needed or important to buyside? A few months ago there was an article posted on the forum talking about CFA being most important for buyside analysts and a sellside analyst just needed an MBA. of course an MBA wouldn’t hurt but is that crucial though?
Yes. CFA may be on its way to being a replacement for an MBA in the investment management industry and in very rare cases and firms, it may…along with a lot of experience…BUT…it actually being a fully accepted substitute is maybe 10 years or so away. Just look at the people in the positions you currently want.
Neither MBA or CFA are your golden ticket, but they do help especially in sell-side or traditional asset management roles. However, the most important part of both jobs – and especially at hedge funds – is having great stock ideas. You can have a great MBA and CFA but if you don’t know your head from your a$$ when it comes to analyzing stocks, the chances of getting into industry are pretty minimal and deservedly so.
If you want to read more about getting a HF or ER job, you should take a look the various article series I have on Mergers and Inquisitions. Read the articles carefully as many of your questions will be answered. Check it out:
Equity Research: http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/equity-research-recruiting/
Hedge Funds: http://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/hedge-fund-case-studies-part-1-overview/
CFA helps most in traditional asset management jobs and is not especially transportable outside them, though it does help in certain kinds of investment-specific analysis. The MBA teaches you a lot more about getting things done in and running a business, which is useful for management in a variety of contexts, both inside and outside the financial industry. It also goes into greater depth for analyzing things like competition and positioning, which is something that does come up in the CFA CBOK, but is mentioned only briefly and superficially. The CFA teaches you nothing about how to get things done in an organization, which is a critical skill in almost any context.
excellent articles thank you much. do you happen to have anything about being a Portfolio Manager?
Not right now, but hopefully in a few years and with continued excellent performance I’ll eventually make it there 