Where Are They Going?

We began noticing the migration early in 2021 and started asking that question, ourselves. Like you do in your work, we gathered some data and did some analysis. We were able to track sixty-eight people who left a BV practice April through October. (There were probably more. These were the ones we could track.)

• Roughly half went to BV-adjacent fields like asset management or investment banking, places where they could use the same toolkit of skills. It’s likely that the attraction was that bright shiny object: higher pay. The remainder went to financial positions in all manner of businesses.
• Among those who left, the longest tenure was 21+ years. (Yes, people do leave even after a long career.) The shortest, however, was a mere 9 months. More shocking, perhaps, is the median tenure of 31 months. That’s barely enough to recoup a training investment.
• The most revealing, and disappointing, fact is that for about 75% of them, BVFLS was their first job out of college. Mismatched expectations—on both sides—undoubtedly played a big role.

People are difficult to categorize, and there are as many reasons for these moves as there are people making them. What is worse, however, is that we have seen only a little reduction in the pace of departures since we stopped tracking the data in October 2021.