Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits Author: Visit Amazon's Kevin Roose Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0446583251 | Format: PDF
Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits Description
Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, February 2014: If Martin Scorsese's film The Wolf of Wall Street is about the finance industry's greediest adults, Kevin Roose's Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-crash Recruits is a look at those wolves as cubs. The book is a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of the kids starting at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Credit Suisse (it's less sympathetic toward their bosses, who come across like shameless versions of the parents in Peanuts comics). These young bankers and analysts discover that while the pay is good, the hours are bad and the never-ending sense of existential dread is ugly. But perhaps the great irony of the crash of 2008 is that even as it eroded the industry's reputation in the minds of college students, the job market it decimated left those graduates very few employment options. Despite their hesitations, many scared twentysomethings entered the finance sector, as one of the few institutions that was still hiring. Roose suspects that banks attract "confused, insecure college seniors, who are smart and capable in a general, all-purpose way, but aren't phenomenally talented at any one thing." Most of the eight workers Roose follows end up burning out or quitting; the ones who succeed and stay in finance--you feel the worst for them. --Kevin Nguyen
From Booklist
Roose, a financial journalist and author, offers a compelling glimpse of Wall Street in the post-2008 recession era as he shadows eight first- and second-year entry-level analysts at leading investment firms. All college graduates in their early twenties, they give him unauthorized access to their own experiences and lives in return for absolute anonymity. We learn about their big bonuses and lifestyles along with 100-hour work weeks. Roose is quoted, Their offices are covered in moldy takeout containers . . . . They dress in whatever is left in the clean laundry bag . . . and haven’t seen sunlight in two months. The author discovers the toll the 2008 recession has taken on Wall Street, shrinking it significantly with lost jobs, and he also cites emerging competition for recruits from the growing technology industry. Overall values in this generation may be changing, too, as a student and potential Wall Street recruit said, Everyone wants to make money. But when I’m working in the place, I want to know that I’m doing some good. A thought-provoking, excellent book. --Mary Whaley
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- Hardcover: 336 pages
- Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (February 18, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0446583251
- ISBN-13: 978-0446583251
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
I read this book because I've long had a macabre fascination with the junior analysts and the banking "lifestyle" (which seems to mean the lifestyle of people just starting out after college who live in apartment shares and piss away all their money trying to make girls at clubs think they're rich). I work in financial services, but I came to finance later in my career. I've never worked in a bank, so I don't know what it's like, but my colleagues who have didn't have an experience resembling this.
The book is amusing in parts and a quick, easy read. My main objection to the book is that it doesn't feel serious. It comes off mainly as an excuse for Roose to do "research" by spending a few years partying and going out for dinner with his college buddies. Then at the end of it all, he can write a cautionary book of amateur sociology.
Roose's most interesting observation is not new: smart and talented but risk-averse college students go into banking after they graduate because it's an easy way to continue the achievement oriented lives they're used to, and because it saves them any hard thinking about what the heck to do for a career. The descriptions of the lives of first- and second-year analysts are entertaining, and the subjects are likable. At some point Roose even decides his college buddies are too likable, so he goes out of his way to attend the Fashion Meets Finance party so he can report back that in fact, yes, all the people he hasn't met are awful. And that's the key problem with the book: it seems like he's working hard mostly to reinforce all the prejudices he started with.
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