"The hedge fund I work for treats non-PMs as disposable assets"

I work for one of the well-known hedge funds. I'm not going to disclose my function because I do not want to be traced. Since I have worked here, the number of people coming and going has been astonishing.

Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.

It's common knowledge that hedge funds churn through portfolio managers, who jump from fund to fund after drawdowns. To some extent, this is to be expected: portfolio managers are well paid and if they make a loss it is their issue.

I am not a portfolio manager. Nor are people in my team paid that kind of money. And yet, the fund seems to think it's ok to hire and fire arbitrarily as we're earning seven figures. 

This is a problem. I have seen people's careers being ruined. Signing up for a supporting role is not the same as signing up for a big pod. We don't get big bonuses and we are only as good as our last projects. Finding something new can be hard. 

The fund doesn't seem to care about this. It just keeps hiring and letting people go and pay them money to go quietly. In my opinion, it's playing fast and loose with people's livelihoods.

It will be interesting to see what happens to this approach if the UK government changes the rules regarding unfair dismissal. For the moment, people are tapped on the shoulder, given a payment for their hurt feelings and asked to leave immediately. My understanding is that this won't be possible in the future and that a proper process will have to be followed. I know many people will welcome that. It's not worth taking a job if you're just going to be fired for no reason.

Roland Mace is a pseudonym 

 Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Signal: sarahbutcher.22  Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. 

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate.