Apollo's hard-driving culture is extreme even by Wall Street standards, and it's burning through young workers. Here's why $450,000-plus pay and rules to ban weekend emails aren't enough to keep them happy.

• Associate burnout is wearing on investment giant Apollo Global Management after a busy year of deals during the pandemic. 
• Seven of 30 of Apollo’s New York private-equity associates have left the firm over the past three months. 
• Insider spoke with several current and former Apollo employees about the heavy workload during the pandemic. 
• Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.

It was a rule that became fodder for jokes among associates inside the $450 billion investment giant Apollo Global Management.

Last May, the co-heads of Apollo’s $80 billion private equity business, Matt Nord and David Sambur, banned work calls and emails from Friday to Saturday evenings.

The move was meant to create a small respite in a workplace that, even by Wall Street’s standards, had become notorious for its blowtorch pace. That workload became more hectic as the firm, famed for its distressed investing prowess, sprung into action during the downturn brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The firm’s successes included a $1.2 billion deal with Silver Lake Partners to buy a stake in the travel website Expedia, a $1.75 billion investment in the grocery store operator Albertsons, and a $2.25 billion transaction to acquire the rights to control and operate the Venetian resort and casino in Las Vegas.

“There are to be no calls or meetings scheduled during this time unless it is urgent or related to a live deal,” the executives said in a team email reviewed by Insider. “Please also try to curtail Sunday deadlines unless for ‘live deal’ purposes, as that effectively eliminates the intended benefit of this policy.”

Like some other efforts to improve the work-life balance at Apollo, however, the rule quickly faded from view.

Associates told Insider that partners at the firm simply compensated for the communications hiatus by piling on extra work on Saturday night. Within a month, it seemed as though the mandated break had disappeared, said two associates, one of whom has since left.

Now, the firm is grappling with the departure of a large portion of its associate class, an exodus that chips away at the manpower necessary to sustain its active deal flow. It’s a trend that’s accelerated in the past few years, according to current and former Apollo employees, and is now crescendoing as Wall Street at large reckons with psychological tensions stemming from remote work.

Seven of the 30 private-equity associates in Apollo’s New York City office, along with one principal, have left the firm over the past three months. Others also plan to submit their resignations, according to one current and several former employees who are familiar with the situation.

Late nights and weekend shifts are a rite of passage in the investment world, where associates are handed the grunt work of preparing presentations and analyses that executives rely on to evaluate and approve deals. Their bonus checks often come in late December, making the beginning of the year a common moment for burned out or disaffected workers to jump ship.

Apollo’s turnover, however, is noteworthy in light of the firm’s recent efforts to institutionalize and retain its workforce, which has included the hiring of its first head of human capital, as well as a head of diversity. The company has undertaken mindfulness initiatives like meditation sessions and a virtual children’s book storytelling time for employees with kids.

Associates at the firm are also granted some of the highest pay packages in the industry, earning around $450,000 in their first year, and more than $100,000 increases in subsequent years, according to Apollo executives.

That’s more than double what other leading private-equity firms offer and comes with other perks. While other firms often push associates to depart after two or three years and attend business school, Apollo has no such mandate and often promotes successful associates to the more senior title of principal after four years. Principals who go on to become partners can earn millions in annual compensation.

“You’re paid to grind,” said one former associate who left the firm over the past two years, after deciding Apollo’s non-stop workload wasn’t for them. “I thought, ‘I don’t want to be spending my time doing this; I don’t care how much you pay me.'”

A mental and physical toll

Joanna Rose, a spokesperson for Apollo, said that seven departures out of a global pool of 44 private-equity associates amounted to a modest 16% attrition rate.

Rose said that the firm is constantly striving to improve and cultivates its talent with a long-term approach. About 80% of Apollo’s private-equity partners started as associates, she said.

“While we hire all associates on the path to partner, some level of attrition is natural and we are equally proud of our talented alumni,” Rose said.

Two current and three former Apollo sources, however, described the mental and physical toll that the company’s high-pressure workload can inflict on associates — most in their mid- to late-20s — whose jobs are to be on-call. 

Associates are often handed assignments by executives late in the day, with the expectation that they are to forgo a night’s sleep to prepare materials for early the next morning. Associates assigned to support a deal could expect to live without a full night of rest for weeks on end. One source who recently left Apollo said they often felt drunk because of sleep deprivation. 

One executive made it known that he hadn’t taken a personal trip until he was promoted to principal — a point that associates took to mean that they shouldn’t either, according to one Apollo associate who heard the remarks firsthand.

This person, and an employee who left the firm recently said that associates have coped with the work stresses by relying on a dark sense of humor to get them through the day, joking about everything from the perceived incompetence of superiors to more extreme statements, like saying they would rather kill themselves than keep working. 

Others at the firm challenged these accounts, claiming they had been exaggerated. One called them “far-fetched,” while another said that the weekend work prohibition had been upheld. 

Three other current executives said that the firm encourages employees to take two weeks off in August and another two weeks off in December. Two of these executives acknowledged that associates often weren’t actually granted this time in practice if they were pulled into a deal and that breaks, for anyone, had been hard to come by over the past year during the pandemic. 

Young partners hungry for deals

Other factors have intensified the workload, sources said. 

A new group of seven recently promoted partners — including Josh Black, the son of Apollo’s CEO Leon Black — have been given smaller financial interests in the deals they originate than more senior partners. To compensate, they have had to hustle to find more opportunities, according to people who have worked with them.

“The partners that were promoted are incredibly hungry and literally always online,” said the current Apollo employee.

“It’s like a constant sprint,” this person said, pointing to an expectation of regular 16- to 18-hour workdays throughout the pandemic.

The Apollo employee who recently left the firm said the environment would be more bearable if Apollo didn’t tolerate partners who were difficult to work with.

“Being like a jerk to your subordinates, that is frowned upon, but secondary to performance,” the former associate said. “If you’re willing to work 20 hours a day and get deals done, you will be told to be nicer, but it won’t impact your career.”

Some employees still refer to an incident in 2017, when a junior associate went to the hospital after working long hours. Rose, the Apollo spokeswoman, said the firm disputes any allegation that someone was hospitalized because of work stress, but declined to say what happened. The associate, who was once considered to be enthusiastic about a career at Apollo, left to join another firm shortly after.

He could not be reached for comment.

Delicate time

The accounts from the associates come as Apollo has faced the biggest blow to its public image since its founding 30 years ago.

Earlier this year, it instituted a raft of governance changes, including appointing new independent directors to its board and announcing the resignation of its longtime CEO, Leon Black, who will remain the chairman of its board.

The changes followed findings from the law firm Dechert that Black had paid the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein $158 million for business advice, including tax and estate planning.

Apollo announced in January that firm co-founder Marc Rowan would become its new chief executive. Rowan said recently that one of his top priorities at the firm would be improving its culture.

Apollo employees say that while the Epstein scandal drew headlines and spurred jokes internally at the firm, it did nothing to disrupt the firm’s vast pipeline of deals.

One senior executive at the firm who spoke with Insider said some associates who had resigned were underperformers. The person also suggested that the pandemic had impacted the work-life balance across industries.

The recently departed associate agreed with that suggestion.

“What made the job tolerable was most associates are nice and good to be around,” the former associate said. “Having ten people in the room with you at 3 am is better than being in a room by yourself at 3am.”

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