Apollo Global hired more than 300 people last year| An Incredible Place

If you're looking for a humble, fast-growing, high-paying workplace, you'll always find Jane Street. But if you're not a developer or specialize in quantitative analysis, you might want to try Apollo Global instead. The buy-side company is a reformed employer, and they do some big hires.

Speaking during Apollo's investor call last week, Apollo CFO Martin Kelly said the company hired 350 people last year, which represents a roughly 9% increase by our estimates. Kelly said: "Half of the net new hires were in North America and Europe, and the other half were in Mumbai." Kelly said Apollo intends to hire in 2024 in a "very targeted" manner. Mumbai will remain a focus, but the fund is also focused on scaling up construction, building high-value coverage and looking at new products and product creation. Speaking on the same call, CEO Mark Rowan emphasized the company's history of insane expansion since 2008. Enthusiastically, Rowan said: "We've had 14x growth. "That's faster than Apple's revenue. That's faster than Microsoft's revenue. That's faster than semiconductors, which is really extraordinary," Rowan said excitedly.

As Apollo grew, it changed. Three years ago, the firm's junior associates complained about working 20-hour days and 3 a.m. hours among dealmakers who "acted like idiots." In 2021, the firm reportedly had to raise partner pay by $100,000 to $550,000 per year after several threatened to leave.

Some of Apollo's historic difficult leadership culture appears to have been propagated by Apollo co-founder Josh Harris who stepped down to manage his own investments in mid-2021. In 2020, the Wall Street Journal accused Harris of sending emails on Saturday mornings and following up with a "?" if he didn't get a response within 10 minutes. It said Harris had a reputation for "attacking young analysts on their financial models" and a tendency to say things like "Some people play golf. "Some people play tennis. I work."

Mark Rowan took over as Apollo's CEO in early 2021, around the time of complaints about burnout at work. Under his leadership, the culture there has changed. Bloomberg said last year that it has become more rationalized, that there is less micromanagement and more diversity. Off the record, one private equity headhunter confirms that this is the case. He states: "Apollo is no longer a difficult or overly aggressive place to work," he says, citing the experience of the people he has hired there. "It now attracts very nice, low-ego people."

That may be so, although some partners at Apollo may disagree. Writing last year in Wall Street Oasis, a young associate who claimed to work at the fund said the hours are still "insane" and that 80 hours a week and being on-call overnight is the norm.