Pros
- Compared to BB, good work-life balance. Mostly free weekends, c. 15-16 hours a day during the week in advisory, a 1-2 hrs less in funds. But gets much worse during the transactions, no different to BB. - Flat structure, even the most senior management sits on the floor with the rest - Some Associate-level responsibilities might be handed over to an analyst - Good exposure and possibilities to demonstrate yourself (not very helpful when it comes to promotions though) - Culture is generally better than BB, people are mostly nice and helpful - Less pitching, more modelling / working on real business issues (especially in Funds)
Cons
- Pay - way too low even adjusted for the shorter hours - Management is not doing a good job managing employees' expectations (redundancies, pay etc). As a result, people don't have much confidence in Mac going forward - Deal flow - with no new PE funds to spend and no 3rd party advisory skills - lack of transactions - Certain discrimination against non-australians (promotions, redundancies etc) - Infra specialisation - transactions are hard / take long to execute => less chances of closing deals (i.e. less fees) for the same amount of work compared to BB