Unreasonable Direction and a Stagnant Atmosphere - Senior Associate Audax Group Employee Review

- Great place to start your career if you want to actually learn how to invest. Deal flow is very strong given the buy and build model so you get way more real deal reps than you’d get at most firms and you’re trusted with meaningful work right away - Advancement happens quickly. Promotions based on performance, not time, and the firm has a track record of promoting people who started as analysts or interns all the way to VP and MD (rare among most firms these days). It's an intentional focal point to build the senior team by investing in their own people - Mentorship is real. They take the apprenticeship model seriously. Senior team members include junior folks in discussions and actually care about building relationships with them. You’ll be in meetings and conversations as an analyst / associate that most other firms would limit to VPs and MDs - Team-oriented. Everyone works hard, but people genuinely enjoy working together. It’s a high-expectation environment but not overly formal - Lots of support resources built out already so deal team can focus on the core investment work instead of chasing down logistics - People are great. Smart, motivated, genuinely good people - Returns are consistently top decile / quartile and firm is growing as a result

Definitely a demanding place. The hours can be long and expectations are high, but that’s true of all PE firms. Audax is very meritocratic. They give you tools to succeed if you put in the work

nothing special. typical PE perks: occasional fancy dinners, catered lunches, expense stuff, good health plan, etc.

culture is pretty toxic - management pretends things are great and sugarcoats everything, junior employees have low morale - salary not competitive at all. terrible 401k match. taboo to talk about coinvest. no salary transparency or progression path - terrible culture of being available/visible. i've spent entire days with no work, sitting in the office just waiting to go home - very top heavy. tons of MDs and too many opinions. managment can't change because they can't decide on anything. - hours aren't bad but toxic culture makes you stay late. sometimes i save work for later so i have a reason to stay late and look busy - very much a gossip culture. lots of talking about people behind their backs - constant probing for upward feedback from management but nothing ever changes - management appeases junior employees with occasional dinners and parties, gets old after the first three. Partners don't show up at events, and MDs leave as fast as possible - catered lunches sound nice but are unhealthy slop, office snacks are all unhealthy. it's like a 7th grader is ordering the food - office has little color and bright hospital lighting. drives you crazy after a few hours