"Multistrategy hedge funds are hiring armies of insufferable clones"
I've spent the past decade working for some of the world's top multistrategy hedge funds, and I'm beginning to wonder whether I need a change of course. The industry is filling up with the worst kinds of corporate drones.
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It used to be that hedge funds would hire anyone who made money. You could be weird. You could dress badly. No one gave a sh*t because you were fricking amazing and you made money. It was liberating.
That's changed. As multistrategy hedge funds take over the industry, they're standardizing everything. I'm a long short equities guy, and they all want a standardized investment process where everyone uses the same models and follows the same steps. That's not me. I'm the purple rhino. Being different has worked for me in the past, but the industry has become increasingly closed to anyone who doesn't fit the new template of an ideal hire.
In this sense, hedge fund careers are becoming like careers at top private equity firms. If you want to work for a Carlyle or a KKR, you'll need to have studied at a top university, worked for a US bank and done a top US MBA. Hedge funds are going down the same route, except they want just STEM graduates from big banks' trading desks. They're not building businesses around individual portfolio managers; they're building operations.
Some of the big funds are holding out. Millennium, for example, is still a place for mavericks. If you're a successful portfolio manager at Millennium and you want to hire someone to stir your protein shakes, they're fine with that; it's your P&L. At other funds, the opportunity for individual creativity is less and less.
That's a shame. Difference was what once made the hedge fund industry great. Now there's just an army of clones.
Oliver Forsman is a pseudonym
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