Jared L Kubin@JaredKubin
HF BONUS 101:
*with all these payout posts on “revenue”… let me contextualize the multi strats for you
JS is its own animal. But the multis (Citadel, Millennium, P72, BAM, Exodus, Schonfeld) all run the same flavor of comp. Siloed pods…eat what you kill
payouts can run 12-25% of P&L depending on what your PM negotiated and what platform you’re on. Smaller shops quote 20%+ to pull talent. Sidenote… a lot of these “signing bonuses” you see in articles are actually loans against future comp this can be clawed back… but that’s for another post.
stuff people get wrong:
it’s NET P&L, not gross. Financing, borrow, Bloomberg, data, salaries, seat costs, overhead… all netted before payout. A pod doing $50M gross might pass through $15M before anyone sees a check
the PM controls the splits inside the pod. If the team is on 18% and the PM runs a 6 person book, he decides what everyone gets. No formula. Some are generous. Plenty keep 70%+ and treat analysts as fungible. Biggest variable in your actual comp and nobody talks about it in interviews… get it in writing. Netting across sub sectors is real inside a team…make sure you understand!
high water marks are real. Down 8% one year, you make it back before the clock restarts. Some platforms reset HWM if you get rehired elsewhere internally, some don’t. Ask 100%.
deferrals. USUALLY 50% of your bonus above some threshold gets deferred 3 years and only vests if you stay. How they keep you from walking after a big year. Leave early, you eat the unvested portion unless your next shop buys you out. IF You lose money in year 2… it gets netted against deferred with no recourse. Tough.
the drawdown trigger is the scary part. Most pods have a stop loss, usually 3-5% of budget, sometimes 7-10%. Hit it and you’re done. Pod cut, team fired, capital reallocated. Doesn’t matter how good your 3 year track record is. This is why a 20% payout sounds rich until … yea
a senior analyst on a good pod clearing $1-3M in a normal year is realistic. PMs running their own book can do $5-20M+ in a strong year. Top decile PMs at the big shops are printing numbers that would surprise you. Flip side, median PM tenure at these places is 2-3 yrs and a real chunk of pods blow up every cycle (think NFL career length)
Overall… everything is negotiable, it’s opaque, clawbacks suck, and a hard way to make an easy living
