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zbaer's review against another edition
3.0
Very interesting read, however, I'd like to say a few things:
-Why is it wrong to want a stable career with a good salary?
-I think I prefer midwestern displays of wealth.
-Just because you work in the private sector does not mean you do not have time to volunteer or have hobbies without constantly thinking of P&Ls. Work-life balance is a real thing.
-Why is it wrong to want a stable career with a good salary?
-I think I prefer midwestern displays of wealth.
-Just because you work in the private sector does not mean you do not have time to volunteer or have hobbies without constantly thinking of P&Ls. Work-life balance is a real thing.
vegantrav's review against another edition
4.0
Young Money tells the stories of a handful of recent college graduates (most of them from Ivy League schools) who are beginning their careers on Wall Street as investment bankers and analysts of various types at some of Wall Streets largest firms: JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Credit Suisse.
These Wall Street neophytes work 80 to 100 hours a week in an extremely high stress environment: they often put in 16 hours or more a day during the week and many times even 10 hours a day on weekends. They make starting salaries of around $70,000 and received bonuses that can range from $10,000 to $30,000 or even higher. Their jobs are obviously very taxing to their personal lives and, due to lack of sleep and high stress, effect their physical and psychological health, but if they can make it through their first two years, then they can move on to better paying positions where they don't have to work such horrendous hours. But making it through those first two years proves exceedingly difficult.
In telling the stories of these young Wall Street bankers and analysts, Kevin Roose provides a fascinating insight into the financial world and shows us what kind of people it takes to succeed in that world. He also documents many of the recent changes on Wall Street in the aftermath of the 2008 fiscal crisis.
If you are at all curious about the inner workings of Wall Street, this book will pull back the curtain for you.
These Wall Street neophytes work 80 to 100 hours a week in an extremely high stress environment: they often put in 16 hours or more a day during the week and many times even 10 hours a day on weekends. They make starting salaries of around $70,000 and received bonuses that can range from $10,000 to $30,000 or even higher. Their jobs are obviously very taxing to their personal lives and, due to lack of sleep and high stress, effect their physical and psychological health, but if they can make it through their first two years, then they can move on to better paying positions where they don't have to work such horrendous hours. But making it through those first two years proves exceedingly difficult.
In telling the stories of these young Wall Street bankers and analysts, Kevin Roose provides a fascinating insight into the financial world and shows us what kind of people it takes to succeed in that world. He also documents many of the recent changes on Wall Street in the aftermath of the 2008 fiscal crisis.
If you are at all curious about the inner workings of Wall Street, this book will pull back the curtain for you.
frostap's review against another edition
4.0
Four stars because I couldn't put it down (and because I am grateful to not work on Wall Street)! I didn't find this to be a completely unbiased view, but the changes in the characters--who I am frankly shocked agreed to share this much with a writer--are like a slow-motion train wreck. So interesting!
khornstein1's review against another edition
2.0
OK, I read this on impulse...it was positively reviewed in The Week. It's a quick read and somewhat fun if you want to take a trip back to your post-collegiate years.
My husband has worked in finance since his late 20's. He now supervises and trains many 20-something analysts, really enjoys it, but is surprised by generational differences...but I digress.
Young Money can't seem to find its central argument or even a theme. Is this a book about finance or a book about being a young person and how people choose a career/mission in life? (that would have been a more interesting book).
Kevin Roose follows a handful of young people as they enter bank training programs. Guess what? Some of them like it in finance and some of them don't! Some of them--hold your breath--switch jobs and go to other banks or go join tech startups!
The kids work 100-hour weeks and take Adderall---or at least some of them do. Sometimes they don't sleep for three days. As a parent of young people, I am totally against this! But is this big news? This has been the way in finance training programs for years. And law. And advertising. And it's not that way everywhere and it's getting better.
Guess what? Some of the trainees' superiors are mean! They yell at them! They get mad when the trainees make mistakes in their Excel spreadsheets! Guess what people? As someone who has worked in a variety of fields for years, I can now reveal something shocking--people sometimes yell; people get angry when you make mistakes. Part of being an adult is figuring out how to handle that. I have techniques for calming people down. And fixing mistakes. And I check my work (which is usually not quantitative where a mistake representing millions or billions of dollars would be a bigger deal). Yes, people don't like typos. (This drives my husband crazy by the way--when things are done with tons of mistakes by young people being paid A LOT.)
The trainees are described as "depressed" which means they like to hang out on rooftops getting high, gain weight, or go to bars. They date people and break up. They sleep in minimally decorated apartments. They take up boxing or travel to Italy. I would not call this depression (and no, I'm not trying to minimize depression). This is called being in your 20's.
The biggest revelation for me was that what the entry-level analysts do is relatively easy--i.e. edit spreadsheets and create models. I think the jargon of LBO's and CLO's etc. always made me think that trainees already knew or somehow had to pick up some incredibly difficult stuff (like vector calculus).
Then Keven Roose shares his big expose--he breaks into the black-tie induction dinner of Kappa Beta Phi. Yes, it sounds gross and awful. And I am totally against homophobic and racist humor. But again--is this news? Have you ever read about Bohemian Grove? Google it. Yes, there are some really awful people in finance. Is this a big reveal? There have been countless articles on this over the years.
Young whippersnappers. Hmph.
My husband has worked in finance since his late 20's. He now supervises and trains many 20-something analysts, really enjoys it, but is surprised by generational differences...but I digress.
Young Money can't seem to find its central argument or even a theme. Is this a book about finance or a book about being a young person and how people choose a career/mission in life? (that would have been a more interesting book).
Kevin Roose follows a handful of young people as they enter bank training programs. Guess what? Some of them like it in finance and some of them don't! Some of them--hold your breath--switch jobs and go to other banks or go join tech startups!
The kids work 100-hour weeks and take Adderall---or at least some of them do. Sometimes they don't sleep for three days. As a parent of young people, I am totally against this! But is this big news? This has been the way in finance training programs for years. And law. And advertising. And it's not that way everywhere and it's getting better.
Guess what? Some of the trainees' superiors are mean! They yell at them! They get mad when the trainees make mistakes in their Excel spreadsheets! Guess what people? As someone who has worked in a variety of fields for years, I can now reveal something shocking--people sometimes yell; people get angry when you make mistakes. Part of being an adult is figuring out how to handle that. I have techniques for calming people down. And fixing mistakes. And I check my work (which is usually not quantitative where a mistake representing millions or billions of dollars would be a bigger deal). Yes, people don't like typos. (This drives my husband crazy by the way--when things are done with tons of mistakes by young people being paid A LOT.)
The trainees are described as "depressed" which means they like to hang out on rooftops getting high, gain weight, or go to bars. They date people and break up. They sleep in minimally decorated apartments. They take up boxing or travel to Italy. I would not call this depression (and no, I'm not trying to minimize depression). This is called being in your 20's.
The biggest revelation for me was that what the entry-level analysts do is relatively easy--i.e. edit spreadsheets and create models. I think the jargon of LBO's and CLO's etc. always made me think that trainees already knew or somehow had to pick up some incredibly difficult stuff (like vector calculus).
Then Keven Roose shares his big expose--he breaks into the black-tie induction dinner of Kappa Beta Phi. Yes, it sounds gross and awful. And I am totally against homophobic and racist humor. But again--is this news? Have you ever read about Bohemian Grove? Google it. Yes, there are some really awful people in finance. Is this a big reveal? There have been countless articles on this over the years.
Young whippersnappers. Hmph.
pmhandley's review against another edition
informative
reflective
fast-paced
3.5
By far the best part of this book is when the author walks into a secret Wall Steet society and just tells us all the embarrassing things he saw. Besides that, I didn't find most of his subjects all that interesting. Their trajectories were sort of interesting, but as people, I found (most of!) them kind of... dull. It certainly highlights how wildly out of touch a lot of people making six figures their first year out of college can be. How smart can Wall Street really be if it took a global financial crisis to make them think maybe they should look for people who actually have a background and interest in finance instead of just recruiting a pile of Ivy Leaguers who may or may not know what they're doing?
shosh's review against another edition
2.0
This is an easy read and definitely has some interesting bits, such as how Wall Street's recruitment focus shifted from two-year stints for Ivy School elites to a longer-term view of keeping it's young recruits. But if you have already read Michael Lewis' books, I don't think any of the Wall Street insider stuff will surprise you, and Roose's post-crisis view isn't all that insightful.
If you are looking for a hard examination of how finance and the Wall Street environment changed, or didn't, after the Great Recession, you won't find that. Roose tried but it was mostly superficial, like smaller but still substantial bonuses. Insight from the subjects -- who admittedly are pretty young! -- is mostly limited to fears that their jobs aren't fulfilling. I didn't work on Wall Street but felt that way through most of my young 20's too, so...
If you are looking for a hard examination of how finance and the Wall Street environment changed, or didn't, after the Great Recession, you won't find that. Roose tried but it was mostly superficial, like smaller but still substantial bonuses. Insight from the subjects -- who admittedly are pretty young! -- is mostly limited to fears that their jobs aren't fulfilling. I didn't work on Wall Street but felt that way through most of my young 20's too, so...
menaquinone's review against another edition
5.0
"I've been saying to people who are planning to go into finance, 'I'm disappointed in you,' Marina said"
I liked this book not so much because of the subject matter (though examining Wall St culture post-'08 was interesting) but because many of the thought patterns, experiences and social phenomena in the book have surprisingly familiar parallels in contexts I've been in.
The first few chapters of the book were funny and concerning in equal measure as they examined why the various interviewees went to Wall St despite most of them having alternative plans prior to doing internships in college + their adaptation to Wall St culture. The middle chapters of the book were interesting but kind of a let-down to hear ppl complaining about poor working experiences / work-life balance. I suppose it's bad but it's not a unique problem. The end of the book was ostensibly hopeful? but kind of sus because it celebrated the decreasing prominence of Wall St careers though some of the alternatives (this book was written roughly a decade ago) aged like milk.
Overall, I think if you've ever been in an environment that's very competitive, where people have sought to chase prestige for the sake of doing so, or witnessed finbros in the wild this book would be quite an entertaining read.
I think for myself, witnessing a number of ppl around me mirroring some of the behavioral and thought patterns the interviewees in this book exhibited when initially entering or striving for positions in Wall St, as well as strongly considering "traditional careers", I can't help but worry about whether their outcomes will be like some of the people in this book. I suppose only time will tell.
I liked this book not so much because of the subject matter (though examining Wall St culture post-'08 was interesting) but because many of the thought patterns, experiences and social phenomena in the book have surprisingly familiar parallels in contexts I've been in.
The first few chapters of the book were funny and concerning in equal measure as they examined why the various interviewees went to Wall St despite most of them having alternative plans prior to doing internships in college + their adaptation to Wall St culture. The middle chapters of the book were interesting but kind of a let-down to hear ppl complaining about poor working experiences / work-life balance. I suppose it's bad but it's not a unique problem. The end of the book was ostensibly hopeful? but kind of sus because it celebrated the decreasing prominence of Wall St careers though some of the alternatives (this book was written roughly a decade ago) aged like milk.
Overall, I think if you've ever been in an environment that's very competitive, where people have sought to chase prestige for the sake of doing so, or witnessed finbros in the wild this book would be quite an entertaining read.
I think for myself, witnessing a number of ppl around me mirroring some of the behavioral and thought patterns the interviewees in this book exhibited when initially entering or striving for positions in Wall St, as well as strongly considering "traditional careers", I can't help but worry about whether their outcomes will be like some of the people in this book. I suppose only time will tell.
amandolin80's review against another edition
4.0
Enjoyable book! Cured a burning desire that I should have gone into finance. The inside world of wall st has always fascinated me . I also really like this authors style. Kevin roose is like a smooth, very drinkable wine! I will be looking forward to his next sociology
shaunariane's review against another edition
2.0
Wall Street banks had made themselves the obvious destinations for students at top-tier colleges who are confused about their careers, don’t want to lock themselves in to a narrow preprofessional track by going to law or medical school, and are looking to put off the big decisions for two years while they figure things out.
I’ll start it off by saying if this book wasn’t only 285 pages, I would’ve given up around 200 pages in. Kevin Roose was a journalist for the Times and after the market crash in 2008 he decided to investigate “the hidden world of Wall Street’s post-crash recruits.” What Kevin really meant to say is he was going to cherry pick a few twenty-somethings who didn’t even want to pursue finance to follow around for a few years so that he could word vomit his feelings about the ethicality and moral-rightness of Wall Street all over the pages of this book.
At the crux of everything is the quote above. There are young adults in every corporate job who are there only because they don’t know what else to do or they feel pressured. For this author to then make blanket statements about the finance industry as a whole based on these experiences makes no sense. If you threw me in the health care system and wrote a book about my experience it probably would come off as cynical and negative as this book, because it’s not what I want to do with my life.
The Epilogue undermines the entire book by showing a “where are they now” of each of the main financiers. Every single one of them, once they had a couple years to figure out where they wanted to be and what they wanted to do, was happy (even if it meant long hours and Excel models).
P.S. I’m not saying that there isn’t something worth writing about buried under all the biases in this book. Toxic workplaces, fraternity-like hazing of first-years, and so much more are worth digging into.
deblina's review against another edition
reflective
fast-paced
2.5
- Kinda skimmed honestly - a little bit of me-search motivating this read, but I don't think this had like a bunch of novel insight
- I think I've heard Jasmine sort of quote this positively, but I can't find the quote rn
- Less academic version of Liquidated