"I was an analyst at a top hedge fund. It was a terrible job"

I've just left my job as an analyst at a major multistrategy hedge fund. I won't be looking for another one. After seven years in the industry, I have decided to do something else instead. 

Working as an analyst for a major hedge fund is a forsaken profession. The job is very hard. Things can often go wrong and when they go right you get none of the praise. 

As an analyst, your role is to bring investment ideas to the portfolio manager (PM). This means that the analysts do a lot of the work, but the portfolio managers often take all the glory. 

It's worse at some funds than others, and at the fund I've just left - one of the biggest - the situation is particularly bad. I wasn't working in the same office as the portfolio manager in my pod; we had multiple analysts in the team, and he was able to play us off against each other and to make it seem that our ideas were his own.

It's not always like this. The first portfolio manager I worked with was fair and would partner with the analysts. When I had ideas, he would discuss them with me and help fill in the gaps. When he profited from my ideas, he would share the PnL.

However, when you get a bad portfolio manager as an analyst, he or she will simply take the bulk of the money made from your ideas himself. At many of the big funds, the PMs have the freedom to pay analysts what they want. Last year, my portfolio manager paid me terribly after I worked 80-hour weeks all year. It's just not worth it. 

There needs to be much more clarity around analyst pay. The PMs are making all the money, but some of them don't do much more than enter the trades. This is why a lot of analysts either try to become portfolio managers themselves or simply quit. I am quitting.

Elena Andrews is a pseudonym 

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