PE to Digital Nomad Transition
Nearing the end of my 2-yr associate stint and have decided I no longer want to follow the trad. path due to soul crush (eg consistent 80hr weeks, limited “PTO” where I work the whole time, typical last-minute portCo requests). While I’m sure there are better seats out there, the punchline is there is no “me-time” as an exempt employee once the almighty dollar gets involved
Curious if anyone has been able to leverage their PE/IB experience to land a remote gig that has allowed them to “work-from-anywhere”. Fine with a 50%+ pay-cut and less interesting work if able to secure cash flow that would enable me to explore the world on various work visas
Recognize SWE would have been the preferred path for this lifestyle but seems like an uphill battle making that career change (and landing coveted remote role)
Lastly, not interested in exploring the world via MBA — the bleak, soulless eyes of my direct managers indicate that the two-year vacation only alleviates so much of the pain when you return
take a vacation
Same boat as well, would love to hear any thoughts on this
Bump, highly interested
I’d suggest to do the mba
mba will give the optionality to return but also expose you to other careers and lifestyles you hadn’t thought of
When I was at Harvard I met an older alumni that ran a 100% remote boutique IB firm long before Covid
they were paying a haircut on street but doing 40-60 hours remote serving MM clients
he said he had lots of Harvard and Wharton types working on. His team
can’t remember the name unfortunately but maybe you can find it
I know someone who did this. Ended up going into day trading and travels a lot. Seems to be able to sustain his lifestyle (like many, he had a crazy good year in 2021 and continued doing it for a few years). Seems okay with his life choices but I think he quit private equity pre-maturely if I'm being honest.
This is literally what I am trying to do. Can we swap DMs?
Not sure what I could add. Found out this person recently jumped back to the buyside (I think he's in private credit now). He's at a fund I never heard of.
To an extent, I do think he regrets leaving the PE path. He was at a MM fund where a path to partnership was feasible.
Long story short, there aren't that many junior finance roles that are fully remote. That being said, it's definitely doable to find something as long as you are willing to accept not just lower comp, but a lower profile role as well. Tech firms are generally much more likely to offer full remote positions so I would start there. FP&A is probably going to be your best bet, obviously corp dev and strategy would fit your skillset as well, but it's going to be extremely hard to be successful as a junior employees in those roles without some form of in-person interactions.
I have been fully remote for a year and a half now (I'm actually the CFO of a startup, I need to update my title...) and while there's definitely some benefits, I am starting to question whether I would prefer to have the opportunity to come in and see people once or twice a week or a couple of days every couple of weeks. Pros are easy, I have total and absolute flexibility of where I want to work from. My life has materially changed since covid because of that, we split our time between a townhouse in one of the large East Coast cities that's not NYC and a cottage. Being in the countryside and able to just get out of the house for a swim in the lake, bike ride or cross-country ski rather than going to the gym is life changing. We also spend a month or two a year at my in-laws in Az in addition to a couple more weeks either following each other on work trips to good location or just renting out a place for a few weeks at a time so we really see a lot.
The main downside is dealing with time zones. I am kind of lucky in that I can get people to adjust to my schedule to a certain extent or get people to move meetings if they don't fit with my working hours, but dealing with a global presence just sucks, there's not other way to describe it. As a junior employee, you are not going to have that kind of flexibility and I am not sure how you could be successful negotiating real-time asks and development while being in a completely different time zone. So either you work EST or PST hours regardless of where you are or you need a position that doesn't require a lot of interactions, which means it cannot be high profile. It's obviously harder to create meaningful relationships with your coworkers and it can gets fairly lonely after a while.
I know the idea of the digital nomad is alluring, but my suggestion would be to also look (and maybe focus) on positions that allow for extended time away from your base. Knowing a few people that have lived that life, it gets a bit old after a while so having the options to have a base somewhere that is home, but from where you can take extended trips is IMO a much better idea.
Sorry this is a bit of a side question - what sites have you used for finding remote stuff?
Thanks
It's been quite a while since I used a website to find a job, tbh, now that I think about it, I think I've got all of my jobs post-college through either OCR, headhunters or networking / connections. But in any case, I understand LinkedIn is probably the best place nowadays and I thought that every posting now has the office requirement (ie. onsite, hybrid or remote). Note that not all new positions starts off as being remote, it often happens further along the hiring process. As with any job hunting though, I can't emphasize enough the importance of networking. Having someone vouch for you can go a LONG way into turning a hybrid position into a remote one
mba's are not a vacation. no vacation costs you $200k and makes you do case studies. MBAs dont open a new career path forever they open a short 3 month window of great jobs
i personally hate being remote but thats just me. so isolating and lonely. and im not even an extrovert
Why not check out private credit? Better hours for very solid comp
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DEL
Someone above me said financial modeling/interview coach, which could be an interesting path. A similar one I'd mention is to just do part-time financial modeling/preso work on a site like Upwork or Toptal. It's usually part-time, so a little unpredictable, but you could probably make $100/hour or so if not more depending on whether your'e working with/for a firm like Toptal or if you're completely freelancing on your own. If you don't need as steady of an income, I bet you could make $5-10k/month and really have an open schedule. Assuming you didn't completely hate modeling, deck building, etc, with a BB + Top PE resume, you'd get a lot of interest.
Otherwise, if you want more of an actual job, just look for completely remote Corp Dev/ Corp FP&A types of roles. They do exist. A buddy of mine just got one for a SaaS company, sub 40 hours a week, FP&A manager role, fully remote. Makes about $150k all-in and generally just needs to be online during east coast hours. You could live like a king in a place like Columbia on that and still be in the same timezone.
Yes, if you scan LinkedIn, plenty of examples of this (hybrid and remote) in the US and Europe. I know someone who left large cap PE for this (top performer too) and would never return after landing a gig at an early stage startup with great WLB, colleagues and the company is growing very quickly. He started more junior with paycut but was promoted within a year as they expanded and now earns a higher base than PE with equity upside. They prefer being fully remote and heir lifestyle is incredible. They've transformed as a person. You do need luck to land these roles and to put yourself out there as he got very lucky -his second option would have been a very different experience (likely good but not as amazing as his current gig)
Edit: their role is a mix of COO/CFO function
What type of role titles and levels should someone look for something similar to your friend? Would it be something along the lines of strategy & ops manager?
The beauty of scaleups is that the role can be negotiated and change over time - even if you start in finance or as a more junior team member. It varies so much from company to company and your title doesnt always reflect job description - especially at the earlier stages. And yes - strategy, finance, business operations are typical for ex-finance/consulting types as it's harder to break into tech/product but can happen. Many do sales / GTM too.
Also being a manager at a 1000+ company is very different to a 50 person company so for level it really depends on your relevant experience, tenure, stage of startup, competition etc - I'd focus more on the job responsibilities, potential progression and people you work with than the title.
I did this at a large boring industry F100 company after UMM PE. Highly recommend. I’ve gotten to see the entire country and world and, even when I’m not traveling, the ability to control when I work and not having a commute makes my quality of life so much better. I make $215-225K cash + stock of $50K. I also have a few side businesses I run that bring in another $50k a year that I run completely remotely.
Only point of caution is that you get almost no social credit for this lifestyle from other people in white collar jobs even if you’re objectively having a way crazier and more fun life than everyone else you know. People either assume you’re lying, think you’re a broke loser cause your job isn’t prestigious, or get defensive because they don’t have an adventurous bone in their body. At its core it’s a solo adventure for you and only you - I don’t even tell most people I’m living this lifestyle anymore to avoid having to explain it to people. For me this was a much needed experience because it helped me to stop caring about what people thought of me and start focusing only on myself and my happiness and what I wanted out of life. For others I could see this being an immediate deal breaker.
How many YoE of experience until you found the right role? How did you go about it?
4 years - 2 years BB, 2 years UMM PE. I don’t think my comp is really an outlier. I think $175-225K cash for a corporate job post PE is pretty much market. After 1-2 years operating you can get a PE portco exec role that pays $250-300K cash pretty realistically.
What role did you start at the F100 and do you plan on taking a more "coast" approach in work now or still gunning for higher positions?
Corporate strategy within a business unit. I am absolutely still gunning for the next promotion but that doesn’t mean I’m working more hours. Instead I’m trying to position myself to work on more cross functional things that will allow me to get noticed by more senior people. Careers are far less structured or linear in corporate and your reputation and personal brand are what defines your career. Fortunately, anyone who has done PE is likely 100x more articulate and competent than anyone else they encounter so they get noticed and promoted very very quickly.
There are certain boundaries that I won’t sacrifice for my career now though - I take all of my PTO and I refuse to rearrange my personal life for work. I took a pay cut to do this job for the flexibility and I’m not going to lose that.
Thanks for sharing your story. Just curious, are you required to give notice when traveling international? Any issues with VPN or ad hoc requests to travel domestically?
Definitely inspiring to hear about and good to know there are opportunities out there
I don’t give notice - I doubt anyone would care honestly but I don’t want the attention. We have to use a VPN for work everyday anyway.
No real issues with work hours - I work US hours while I’m traveling and just deal with it. Fortunately I also can basically set my own schedule (one of the biggest perks of individual contributor jobs) so I can move things around as needed if I want to fit something in during the week.
I do have to be careful to plan around domestic work travel, but I usually just book trips relatively last minute (2-3 weeks out) in order to make sure nothing comes up that can cause issues. It’s only an issue for international travel, for domestic travel I can pretty reliably just book a flight from wherever I am since no one really audits my receipts (a lot of people work from lake houses and ski houses for part of the year). There is very rarely travel that isn’t planned 2-3 weeks in advance at least because everyone has families and personal lives they won’t just rearrange around a last minute trip unless it’s something urgent. This is unique to corporate strategy and fp&a - more random travel is more common in corp dev or other deal oriented jobs.
Basically make sure you find a gig where you’re an individual contributor, you’re trusted completely to get your work done and plan your schedule, and where your co workers are midwesterners who don’t give enough fucks to micromanage you.
What side businesses?
This post speaks to me in so many ways. For those who aren’t familiar with my story, I quit PE after 15 years and retired at the end of 2021. One of the primary objectives was to free myself from the restriction of having to be in a single location and essentially live anywhere in the world I choose — which is exactly what I did and still do. However, shortly after retiring I decided to open myself up to do career coaching work for finance professionals to at least stay in touch with the industry, occupy some of my time, and have an income source in case the world blows up and I lose my life savings. While the original target was to do about 5 hours of work a week, it has evolved into about 10-20 hours which feels like an appropriate number, although it ebbs and flows. Some feedback to those who are planning on doing something like this:
1 - There are all sorts of digital nomads groups out there, all over the world. I went to Valencia last march with Hacker Paradise (www.hackerparadise.org) and then joined them again in Cape Town from late October to mid-December. Most digital nomads I’ve met are individual contributors who work 100% remote and do something tech-related (website designer, code monkey, manage IT systems). That said, there are also therapists, marketing, small business owners, independent consultants, and a whole host of other professionals in which people are 100% remote. There is a lot more variety than you might imagine.
2 - Digital nomad communities can be REALLY fun. The nomads who are highly nomadic and change cities multiple times a year tend to be “up for anything” — although most of them are doing it on a reasonable budget. Hiking, trying out new restaurants, going to museums, exploring cities, festivals, food markets, safaris, anything cultural — the nomads tend to live for this kind of stuff. They also flock to low-cost of living cities where they can get a lot of bang for their buck. As someone who has spent most of their professional career in Boston and London, it is such a great feeling when you sit down to an amazing meal and the total bill comes to less than $20, tax and tip included. As technology has improved a lot over the last 10 years, there are now a lot of resources that make nomading easier than ever before. Also, given the prevalence of nomads since COVID, many short term rental offerings, restaurants, etc. all make a point to have strong wifi available so it is pretty easy to work anywhere. On top of this, coworking space can be found in many nomad destinations.
3 - There is definitely a sort of “life is short” hookup personality that seems to come with the nomads I’ve met. While there are plenty of nomads in relationships, those who weren’t all seemed to be on dating apps looking to have a fling with someone in their current destination. Not just the guys, but nearly 100% of the women. I’m not just talking about people in their 20s either — this includes those in their 30s and 40s++ as well.
4 - If you’re coming from IB/PE and you’re looking for this sort of lifestyle, expect to take an enormous pay cut that is not offset by the cost of living decrease. Yes, you can get a good remote gig paying a couple hundred thousand (with restrictions) as mentioned above. This is great if you are comparing it to pulling in 300-500k as a junior IB/PE employee. However, there are very few super high paying remote gigs and a bit of a career cap on earnings unless you go the entrepreneur / generate passive income through real estate routes. The nomads I’ve met are probably in the +/- $100k/year range in their 30s.
5 - It is really hard to go back. I have no interest in doing so, but I’d be shocked if any PE firm were willing to bring me in as a Partner now having been out of the game for a couple of years — and definitely no shot a few more years from now. If you sign up for this lifestyle and career path, make absolutely sure it is what you want to do.
6 - The people you meet outside of finance are often infinitely more interesting than the standard IB/PE/HF guy in financial centers. If you go nomadic, you need to be thoughtful about where you spend your time. I ended up spending the bulk of my time in Sardinia (an Italian island), where the top 10 activities recommended by the local are simply 10 different beaches and you’ll get funny looks if you try to bring a laptop to the cafe (which is hopeless cause a lot of them don’t have electricity outlets). I have a friend who goes to Bali most winters where there is a community that tends to love scuba diving. Next month I’ll be in Costa Rica at a surfing village where surfing and the beach are the interest that draw a lot of people there.
7 - Actually maintaining a relationship becomes a lot more challenging once you go nomadic. All of the couples that I met were both nomads .. never met a couple where 1 was nomadic and the other had a typical desk job. It just doesn’t seem to work. This can limit your dating pool substantially but it can also be perfect if you’re the adventurous type who loves to travel because odds are you’ll encounter a lot of people with similar priorities! I got lucky and ended up meeting an Italian girl last summer and she is now teaching Italian online and gone full digital nomad, so we are beginning to travel together. Too early to report out but we have a long list of places we want to live or visit over the next handful of years.
Going to pause there because I’ve typed quite a lot. This lifestyle isn’t for everyone but it is absolutely perfect for some.
Wake up babe, new compbanker lore just dropped
Fully remote corp dev, currently working on the beach in FL now. Company is East-Coast based
Originally from Netherlands and have a remote job. Working out of NYC for a few months, then traveling to the Bahamas
Care to share what vertical or industry this is in?
RX Consulting at most firms (elite one likes Alix/FTI/A&M, medium ones like Big 4/BDO/GT/OW, or even bad/boutique ones like CR3/CrossCountry/etc; can't speak to MBB as I have no contacts there) are all almost 100% remote outside of traveling to the client site for 2-3 weeks a quarter.
Same with Valuation/Transaction groups at firms like the above.
Obviously outside of Alix/FTI/A&M and MBB there would be a material step down in pay from PE/IB; however, if you are looking to stay in finance/accounting/consulting but become almost entirely remote these are decent options!
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