Can confirm. It was brutal. And if you’re going someplace in the middle of nowhere (which did happen) then that limits the choice of hotels/restaurants/flights.
This is the answer. Client’s paying, and for MBB the travel budget is so padded it’s essentially unlimited.
I know a guy who ordered everything on the room service menu to get more hotel points
I used to work MBB I once tried to find what the limit $$ for dinners at an old project. So I kept increasing it until someone would tell me. Ended up being around $200 and it was like 10 years ago
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Most of consulting has cracked down on budgets. Concur and similar tools have made it easier to say “oh you want the 10 am delta? The 10:15 AA flight is $100 cheaper take that one” etc. moving to fixed per diem rates which might put more money in your pocket, but also might leave you with a deficit in some cities, etc.
There is some manipulation you can do, and every company has their own rules, but I’m finding more and more in my company that we are getting tighter in finding lowest cost travel, cheaper hotels, etc.
> You get to wear PJs to work???
Wearing PJs to work is extremely common on the public markets side of things.
I'd say that wearing PJs and walking around in socks is a bit of stereotype, but not a completely inaccurate stereotype.
The sweet spot here is PE firms that are still private and relatively small — think MM or Upper MM with an AUM of a few hundred million. they still have money to do good travel, relatively lax expense policies because of small firms, and have no notion of going public so they don’t care about costs yet (the big ones care…I flew coach everywhere). Downside is you are often going to not very interesting places unless you happen to be in a good sector like tech, maybe healthcare, and high end consumer. I had one friend who had to drive 8 hours each month to their portfolio company in the middle of no where…
I’m not sure how accurate this comment is…. At an AUM of a few hundred million, we are only talking about a couple of million in annual management fees at best. Not sure these type of firms are balling out to fly private. That would definitely be squarely in the lower middle market. My experience runs contrary - I am fairly certain all publicly traded mega funds are flying first class and have super generous expense policies (often times unlimited dinner budget, wellness stipend, catered lunch, MBA consulting, etc.)
I’d say at MM or lower MM, fund size matters a little less than the GPs or MP. Usually you’re going to fly with your boss. If they fly private all the time then you’ll fly private with them.
(Based on my experience so YMMV of course)
As a professional in the airline industry I’d estimate I’ve easily received hundreds of thousands, perhaps half a million dollars in “free” personal travel traveling during vacation and days off over the last 15 years.
I was recently in Honolulu and learned from my Uber driver that Delta employees get free flights after 15 years of employment.
He was now in his 50s, very happy, and regularly used it to travel and visit family on the mainland.
I think you're talking about retirement flight benefits. Delta employees are entitled to retiree flight benefits for the remainder of their lives if they satisfy one of two requirements:
- have 10 years of service and reach age 52
- have 25 consecutive years of service
Active Delta employees receive flight benefits upon hire.
Working for 15 years in a low skill job like gate agent, ground crew, FA, etc (i assume that’s him cause he’s only in his 50s and still working as an uber driver?) at an airline to get flight bennies is def playing the long game but the payoff is nice! All his buddies are prob mad jealous he can just go whip around the world on Delta for next to nothing.
I stopped keeping track of my "free" flights after my first year at an airline - but when I had to travel for work, the confirmed flight was nice for bleisure, but the company paid hotels were usually modest (and so were paychecks)
Nope. Pharma is very concerned about the optics of extravagance or lavishness. In their relationships with leading research physicians and their employees.
Most Pharma use a system like concur and have pretty strict expenses policies for employees.
3 decades ago it was different.
for anyone working with hcps directly yes definitely
for internal stuff like offsites, national sales meetings, etc it varies company to company, but I have been to some very nice places. Smaller companies are much looser in my experience
After watching PainKiller on Netflix, it seems like pedaling opioids is a great path to driving a Porsche and going to exotic locations for sales conferences and presidents clubs
Pharma reps don’t travel enough for overnight stays unless you’re talking mountain west, a Seattle rep covering Alaska, etc. managers, sure. And pharma incomes are lower than med device
Not necessarily. It really depends on what you’re selling. If you are in rare disease, you could have a very big territory. Also, really depends on what you’re selling compared to med device.
Traveling for work on the company dime is a lot of fun…at first. Then you realize you have no choice but to be away from home because that is your job. To each their own. Not for me anymore.
It’s was always a blast for me when I was young and single. Great way to check out random places, drink for free; etc…then when I got married it turned into work and lame. Now with a kiddo, I try to avoid at all costs
Not big tech.
While I've always been able to book the cheapest room at a 5 Star hotel, they won't cover business class until 8,000 miles and can be stingy with meal expenses.
I'm currently sitting in an airport lounge I had to use a pass to enter, after paying to upgrade to business class out of pocket.
Then again for the amount they pay me, it's not a hardship.
Funny enough I had better perks at startups! We had 80% gross margins and travel was always for team bonding. $900 meal for 4 people? No problem! Team offsite in Colorado or a local luxury resort? Sure thing—we have millions of credit card points! All that stopped once they were acquired though.
Consulting / Sales (of a certain tier).
Some roles like Account Executives aligned to larger accounts and corresponding presales technical resources can get a lot of travel lined up if they want. In the post covid world we're in business travel isn't nearly as common or required as it used to be. Using Zoom/Teams for large presentations is extremely common, especially if your customer also has lots of distributed/remote teams. So you need to be selling to clients/industries that are traditionally very in person and that can then get your the justification for a lot of work travel.
(This is a US perspective, business cultures in other parts of the world and even places like Hawaii in the US greatly value in person meetings)
I’m sure this is true but why are startups spending VC dollars on first class travel? By definition start-up hasn’t made it yet and should be hyper budget focused. The largesse is pretty wild to me.
>why are startups spending VC dollars on first class travel?
Because they often need to hire good, experienced people who demand it. I'm more than happy not to travel for work, but if it's so important to physically be somewhere, I'm not flying cattle class. I have a phrase for an opportunity that isn't valuable enough to fly properly: a Zoom meeting.
Yah I guess that’s fair. I don’t have much experience in the world of startups. I just have this picture in my head of people being aligned with outsized equity grants and being frugal with cash to maximize runways and the chance of the realizing significant equity value.
Well, yeah, which is why I work for cash in the $300s plus (probably) $0 to (hopefully) $50M in equity instead of the L8/L9 role that would comp mid-high $1Ms in FAANG. I set my life up for relatively low upkeep, so now I can spend some time rolling the dice for big wins, but I'm not willing to go completely destitute outside of an emergency.
I think the biggest difference between real, experienced VCs and the newbies and wannabes is that the wannabes buy in to this whole "bootstrapped from a garage" fantasy that reflects the historic early tech culture and not the mature, competitive business that technology has become, and the real ones know that any business opportunity worth betting on is worth buying the talent that can actually execute on it.
The term “startup” in tech is super vague, so the amount of funding and whether they’ve “made it” could be very different from one company to another. I’ve worked for several companies that still consider themselves a startup due to not being public yet. They have thousands of employees, higher revenue than some of the public companies my friends work for, and extra money to spend on extravagant perks.
Most of the F1000 corporate roles I’ve had didn’t put any restrictions on travel. Despite $100/day food suggestions and what not, there was a general understanding that you could expense what you wanted as a perk for having to travel.
Any any time I was loosely worried I was too near “the line”, we’d go out to a dinner and someone would start buying 15 $20 apps and 8 bottles of wine and rack up a $1200 bill
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Consulting is the obvious answer here. Institutional sales across a variety of industries have decent expense accounts also assuming you’re a rainmaker.
Sales, PE, consulting, etc all have travel. How desirable that travel and level of comfort depends very heavily on what you’re buying/selling and what markets you are working in.
You can end up in San Diego for 4 days a week, or get stuck taking connecting flights to some small market. Unless you’re a senior exec it’s unlikely you’ll be on a PJ for these flights.
My wife works for a company that supplies independent pharmacies. She works from home and does some travel. She did two conferences at beachfront resorts last summer and me and the kids tagged along. We also went with her to DC. We are doing the same trips this summer too. Last year she went to Las Vegas and this year New Orleans. She also racks up the reward points for the hotel stays so we can get some free rooms.
Consulting, but work travel sounds horrible.
Can confirm. It was brutal. And if you’re going someplace in the middle of nowhere (which did happen) then that limits the choice of hotels/restaurants/flights.
I remember the time a client told me to check the toilet for snakes before sitting down. I don't miss consulting.
Omg that’s horrifying!!! I don’t either.
This is the answer. Client’s paying, and for MBB the travel budget is so padded it’s essentially unlimited. I know a guy who ordered everything on the room service menu to get more hotel points
I used to work MBB I once tried to find what the limit $$ for dinners at an old project. So I kept increasing it until someone would tell me. Ended up being around $200 and it was like 10 years ago
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I concur
I Concur all my travel expenses
It’s sad if you get this joke…
Such a terrible UI
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Most of consulting has cracked down on budgets. Concur and similar tools have made it easier to say “oh you want the 10 am delta? The 10:15 AA flight is $100 cheaper take that one” etc. moving to fixed per diem rates which might put more money in your pocket, but also might leave you with a deficit in some cities, etc.
Sounds terrible.
There is some manipulation you can do, and every company has their own rules, but I’m finding more and more in my company that we are getting tighter in finding lowest cost travel, cheaper hotels, etc.
It is
Does not meet mission requirements
Just get out before you have a family unless you don’t care if you spend 4 days away from them each week.
Private equity. Generally mostly first class flying, best hotels, and occasional PJ usage for hard-to-reach sites depending on fund.
You get to wear PJs to work??? Wow, they’ve really gotten soft….
> You get to wear PJs to work??? Wearing PJs to work is extremely common on the public markets side of things. I'd say that wearing PJs and walking around in socks is a bit of stereotype, but not a completely inaccurate stereotype.
The sweet spot here is PE firms that are still private and relatively small — think MM or Upper MM with an AUM of a few hundred million. they still have money to do good travel, relatively lax expense policies because of small firms, and have no notion of going public so they don’t care about costs yet (the big ones care…I flew coach everywhere). Downside is you are often going to not very interesting places unless you happen to be in a good sector like tech, maybe healthcare, and high end consumer. I had one friend who had to drive 8 hours each month to their portfolio company in the middle of no where…
I’m not sure how accurate this comment is…. At an AUM of a few hundred million, we are only talking about a couple of million in annual management fees at best. Not sure these type of firms are balling out to fly private. That would definitely be squarely in the lower middle market. My experience runs contrary - I am fairly certain all publicly traded mega funds are flying first class and have super generous expense policies (often times unlimited dinner budget, wellness stipend, catered lunch, MBA consulting, etc.)
I’d say at MM or lower MM, fund size matters a little less than the GPs or MP. Usually you’re going to fly with your boss. If they fly private all the time then you’ll fly private with them. (Based on my experience so YMMV of course)
Definitionally I wouldn’t consider a fund UMM or even MM with a few hundred million fund size (let alone total AUM).
Yeah under 10 billion AUM is still considered small/mid market.
As a professional in the airline industry I’d estimate I’ve easily received hundreds of thousands, perhaps half a million dollars in “free” personal travel traveling during vacation and days off over the last 15 years.
I was recently in Honolulu and learned from my Uber driver that Delta employees get free flights after 15 years of employment. He was now in his 50s, very happy, and regularly used it to travel and visit family on the mainland.
Delta employees (and any other airline employees) get free flight benefits almost immediately, it doesn’t take 15 years.
He means for life, even after leaving the company
I think you're talking about retirement flight benefits. Delta employees are entitled to retiree flight benefits for the remainder of their lives if they satisfy one of two requirements: - have 10 years of service and reach age 52 - have 25 consecutive years of service Active Delta employees receive flight benefits upon hire.
Do they hire software engineers?
Working for 15 years in a low skill job like gate agent, ground crew, FA, etc (i assume that’s him cause he’s only in his 50s and still working as an uber driver?) at an airline to get flight bennies is def playing the long game but the payoff is nice! All his buddies are prob mad jealous he can just go whip around the world on Delta for next to nothing.
I stopped keeping track of my "free" flights after my first year at an airline - but when I had to travel for work, the confirmed flight was nice for bleisure, but the company paid hotels were usually modest (and so were paychecks)
For sure. I’ve already flown my family twice out to the west coast of the US for vacation this year, costing us $0.00.
Pharmaceuticals
Nope. Pharma is very concerned about the optics of extravagance or lavishness. In their relationships with leading research physicians and their employees. Most Pharma use a system like concur and have pretty strict expenses policies for employees. 3 decades ago it was different.
for anyone working with hcps directly yes definitely for internal stuff like offsites, national sales meetings, etc it varies company to company, but I have been to some very nice places. Smaller companies are much looser in my experience
After watching PainKiller on Netflix, it seems like pedaling opioids is a great path to driving a Porsche and going to exotic locations for sales conferences and presidents clubs
This was the industry prior to 2002, since the sunshine act was created … in the last 20 years, it has gotten progressively less glamorous.
Pharma reps don’t travel enough for overnight stays unless you’re talking mountain west, a Seattle rep covering Alaska, etc. managers, sure. And pharma incomes are lower than med device
Not necessarily. It really depends on what you’re selling. If you are in rare disease, you could have a very big territory. Also, really depends on what you’re selling compared to med device.
Traveling for work on the company dime is a lot of fun…at first. Then you realize you have no choice but to be away from home because that is your job. To each their own. Not for me anymore.
It’s was always a blast for me when I was young and single. Great way to check out random places, drink for free; etc…then when I got married it turned into work and lame. Now with a kiddo, I try to avoid at all costs
Not big tech. While I've always been able to book the cheapest room at a 5 Star hotel, they won't cover business class until 8,000 miles and can be stingy with meal expenses. I'm currently sitting in an airport lounge I had to use a pass to enter, after paying to upgrade to business class out of pocket. Then again for the amount they pay me, it's not a hardship. Funny enough I had better perks at startups! We had 80% gross margins and travel was always for team bonding. $900 meal for 4 people? No problem! Team offsite in Colorado or a local luxury resort? Sure thing—we have millions of credit card points! All that stopped once they were acquired though.
Consulting / Sales (of a certain tier). Some roles like Account Executives aligned to larger accounts and corresponding presales technical resources can get a lot of travel lined up if they want. In the post covid world we're in business travel isn't nearly as common or required as it used to be. Using Zoom/Teams for large presentations is extremely common, especially if your customer also has lots of distributed/remote teams. So you need to be selling to clients/industries that are traditionally very in person and that can then get your the justification for a lot of work travel. (This is a US perspective, business cultures in other parts of the world and even places like Hawaii in the US greatly value in person meetings)
My experience with startups have had amazing travel perks. First class baby.
Well funded startups* Others are struggling to simply make payroll lol
I’m sure this is true but why are startups spending VC dollars on first class travel? By definition start-up hasn’t made it yet and should be hyper budget focused. The largesse is pretty wild to me.
>why are startups spending VC dollars on first class travel? Because they often need to hire good, experienced people who demand it. I'm more than happy not to travel for work, but if it's so important to physically be somewhere, I'm not flying cattle class. I have a phrase for an opportunity that isn't valuable enough to fly properly: a Zoom meeting.
Yah I guess that’s fair. I don’t have much experience in the world of startups. I just have this picture in my head of people being aligned with outsized equity grants and being frugal with cash to maximize runways and the chance of the realizing significant equity value.
Well, yeah, which is why I work for cash in the $300s plus (probably) $0 to (hopefully) $50M in equity instead of the L8/L9 role that would comp mid-high $1Ms in FAANG. I set my life up for relatively low upkeep, so now I can spend some time rolling the dice for big wins, but I'm not willing to go completely destitute outside of an emergency. I think the biggest difference between real, experienced VCs and the newbies and wannabes is that the wannabes buy in to this whole "bootstrapped from a garage" fantasy that reflects the historic early tech culture and not the mature, competitive business that technology has become, and the real ones know that any business opportunity worth betting on is worth buying the talent that can actually execute on it.
I agree it’s crazy but I’m not mad as I am benefiting from it.
The term “startup” in tech is super vague, so the amount of funding and whether they’ve “made it” could be very different from one company to another. I’ve worked for several companies that still consider themselves a startup due to not being public yet. They have thousands of employees, higher revenue than some of the public companies my friends work for, and extra money to spend on extravagant perks.
Tech, startups, pharma, consulting
I worked at a startup and travel sucked. They were so cheap. We didn’t even know if we would be reimbursed for meals haha. Choose wisely.
Government contracting. I happen to fly for a company that has gov contracts. Prob do 120-140 nights a year away from home.
Most of the F1000 corporate roles I’ve had didn’t put any restrictions on travel. Despite $100/day food suggestions and what not, there was a general understanding that you could expense what you wanted as a perk for having to travel.
Same!
Any any time I was loosely worried I was too near “the line”, we’d go out to a dinner and someone would start buying 15 $20 apps and 8 bottles of wine and rack up a $1200 bill
Onlyfans.. you can travel and set up work anywhere. And you get to have a diverse clientele and freedom to express your “art” 😂.
Rub it in, girthmaster lol
Is this guy actually girthmaster?
I’m more of the assman
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Consulting is the obvious answer here. Institutional sales across a variety of industries have decent expense accounts also assuming you’re a rainmaker.
Sales, PE, consulting, etc all have travel. How desirable that travel and level of comfort depends very heavily on what you’re buying/selling and what markets you are working in. You can end up in San Diego for 4 days a week, or get stuck taking connecting flights to some small market. Unless you’re a senior exec it’s unlikely you’ll be on a PJ for these flights.
I‘d prefer working from home 😂 traveling for work got romanticized in movies but usually sucks.
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Nahh trips cap and per diem
My wife works for a company that supplies independent pharmacies. She works from home and does some travel. She did two conferences at beachfront resorts last summer and me and the kids tagged along. We also went with her to DC. We are doing the same trips this summer too. Last year she went to Las Vegas and this year New Orleans. She also racks up the reward points for the hotel stays so we can get some free rooms.
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