Vantaggi
Lots of deal flow with the ability to step up and get exposure to multiple parts of the deal process: diligence, meeting with management, financial modeling, process related work, legal, closing, etc. High performers are generally rewarded. The people are friendly and mostly good to work with. Fantastic origination capabilities - it's fun and intellectually stimulating getting to see so many deals across the market.
Svantaggi
Heavy process around internal committees and portfolio reporting. Lots of check-the-box type work related to the internal process, resulting in unfortunate, unnecessary time crunches that have a big impact on work/life balance. For example, doing a last-minute, marathon 2-3 day preparation of investment committee materials only to find out right after you aren't moving forward in the process ("let's do it just in case"). Becoming more of an assets under management business as they pay big prices to win deals (as are many middle market PE firms). High performers tend to get saddled with most of the work while others get by with doing much less.