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Private Equity: A Memoir Kindle Edition
“Sun writes clearly about the demands and privileges of the job, though this isn’t a tell-all about abuses in the industry but rather a more probing inquiry into what we deem success and the values underpinning it.” —Vogue, Best Books of 2024 So Far
A gripping memoir of one woman’s self-discovery inside a top Wall Street firm, and an urgent indictment of privilege, extreme wealth, and work culture
When we meet Carrie Sun, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s wasting her life. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Carrie excelled in school, graduated early from MIT, and climbed the corporate ladder, all in pursuit of the American dream. But at twenty-nine, she’s left her analyst job, dropped out of an MBA program, and is trapped in an unhappy engagement. So when she gets the rare opportunity to work at one of the most prestigious hedge funds in the world, she knows she can’t say no. Fourteen interviews later, she’s in.
Carrie is the sole assistant to the firm’s billionaire founder. She manages his work life, becoming the right hand to an investor who can move mountains and markets with a single phone call. Eager to impress, she dives headfirst into the firm’s culture, which values return on time above all else. A luxury-laden world opens up for her, and Carrie learns that money can solve nearly everything.
Playing the game at the highest levels, amid the ultimate winners in our winner-take-all economy, Carrie soon finds her identity swallowed whole by work. With her physical and mental health deteriorating, she begins to rethink what it actually means to waste one’s life. A searing examination of our relationship to work, Carrie’s story illuminates the struggle for balance in a world of extremes: efficiency and excess, status and aspiration, power and fortune. Private Equity is a universal tale of self-invention from a dazzling new voice, daring to ask what we’re willing to sacrifice to get to the top—and what it might take to break free and leave it all behind.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin Press
- Publication dateFebruary 13, 2024
- File size4009 KB
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Compounding. Boone had a quote about it in his office. Stay in the market as much as possible. Have it, invest it. Wait out any panic and let it ride, let it grow. (Exponentially.) It gets easier to compound the richer you are. You can borrow to live. You never have to touch the principal. You never have to lock yourself into a price you don’t like.168 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
The best investors are masters of psychology: they buy up your mental real estate before you realize it’s for sale.155 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
Boone’s life and investing philosophies seemed to revolve around never letting time or money sit idle. If you have it, invest it. Deploy capital fast.123 Kindle readers highlighted this
Editorial Reviews
Review
“A riveting, thoughtful memoir delving into questions around the psychological and physical cost of burnout and coming of age in the workplace. [Private Equity] surfaces deeper questions around what it means to be successful in America—and whether it’s actually worth it.” —Fortune
“[Sun’s] awakening feels hard-won, and she captures the hollow cultishness that crept over white-collar New York in the Obama years, when Gordon Gekko types started going to SoulCycle. Indeed, the same qualities that nearly reduced her to an automaton have made her an astute, punctilious narrator.” —Harper’s Magazine
“An enthralling memoir about self-discovery, and a look at the dark side of extreme wealth and today's work culture.” —Cosmopolitan
“[Sun’s] book is about career burnout and the hollowness of pursuing money, but it is also a satisfying story about a brilliant woman moving from self-doubt to self-confidence.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Carrie Sun’s memoir, about her experience working for a billionaire hedge fund tycoon, might read like fiction, but it all happened to her. It’s not only a funny, revealing, and exciting read, it’s also a fascinating look inside one of the world’s most secretive and powerful industries.” —Town & Country
“A penetrating but all the more necessary critique of extreme wealth and toxic work culture as [Sun] questions what it really means to waste one’s life.” —Oprah Daily, The Most Anticipated Books of 2024
“Wonderful . . . If you’re a fan of everything from Ishiguro to Michael Lewis, this book is worth checking out.” —Jay Caspian Kang, Time To Say Goodbye
“Piercing and propulsive. Carrie Sun’s examinations of this most rarified stratum are nuanced and poignant. Private Equity is a young woman’s reckoning, set at the summit of money and power that asks the most universal of questions: how much of ourselves do we owe our family and work and how do we find the courage to make our days our own?” —Stephanie Danler, New York Times bestselling author of Sweetbitter
"Private Equity is an extraordinarily gripping and revelatory journey through a world we rarely get to glimpse, despite its influence on our lives. But it is also a moving story of how easily a life can be submerged by work, and what it takes to regain one's soul.” —Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
“Incisive, sharp, and utterly compelling, Carrie Sun’s memoir is a damning portrait of the finance industry and one woman’s harrowing journey through it. She captures with incredible precision the tunnel vision that wealth and privilege provides—as well as the disillusionment and burnout that can follow. Private Equity gives us an opportunity to reflect on our own relationships to work, and to think about how we might make a different way in the world.” —Mychal Denzel Smith, author of Stakes Is High: Life After the American Dream
“Carrie Sun’s nuanced and shocking memoir depicts a woman’s rise in a high finance dystopia where an employee’s life is never private and nothing is equitable. Private Equity is the account of years of leashed efficiency that left her a wild and breaking heart and, eventually, the courage to speak its bitter, unsparing truth.” —Honor Moore, author of Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter at Midcentury
“A fascinating memoir, tense and exciting, taking us inside a rarefied kingdom that, more than we'd like to admit, controls our lives. I highly recommend it.” —Phillip Lopate
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Yuna called me immediately after she got off the phone with Boone. "God, Carrie," she said. "I was so nervous, the first thing I said was 'I can't believe I'm speaking to a billionaire!'"
I had prepped her, of course. Yuna was my best friend from Michigan, from the part of the Mittenw where P. F. Chang's was a hot spot and going to Meijer was a pastime. After high school, I went out east; Yuna enrolled at a local community college and dipped in and out of jobs. She had finally achieved her dream of leaving Michigan, working as a field test engineer for Samsung in Kansas, when I asked her to be a personal reference for my interview process with Boone. She was the last of his calls, of which there were ten.
Eighteen days earlier, I had gone to meet with a headhunter in Midtown. Peter specialized in support roles for boldface names. His team placed candidates in positions from receptionists to chiefs of staff at major firms in finance, real estate, media, and other industries. He and I went over my background again and again.
"You're a superstar. But," he stressed in his British accent, "everyone will ask you why a math and finance dual degree from MIT, who graduated in three years, wants to be an assistant."
I looked out the window of that small, sterile room and wished the air-conditioning would work a lot harder. Three years before this, I had dropped out of an MBA program because I felt restless with the conviction that I had been wasting my life. I wanted to change paths. So, I enrolled as a non-degree student at various universities and cobbled together a liberal arts education by taking classes in the humanities. When I told my fiancé I wished to go back to school to get a graduate degree in creative writing, he asked, "But who's going to cook dinner?" Like so many aspiring writers and artists, I hoped to get a job during the day that would allow me to pay the bills while working on my craft and getting an MFA.
But finance nudged at me. My yearslong indecision about what to do next-whether I should put to better use the education my parents had climbed mountains and crossed oceans to provide for me; whether I should marry my fiancé, who paid for all our joint expenses and some of my individual expenses and in exchange wanted me to prioritize him and his career and not work myself-had cost me over half my life savings. I paid for anything my fiancé did not want me to do. We argued over my taking a fiction workshop, the reason I was alone in Manhattan for the summer even though he and I lived in Ann Arbor. Three weeks into the workshop, I received a cold email from Peter after one of his researchers had come across my profile on LinkedIn.
I looked back at Peter and explained that my objective was neither maximizing earnings nor status. "I want a job," I said, "so I can afford to figure out my life."
Peter asked about the last line on my résumé, where I had written down some interests: Creative writing. College football. I told him he had to keep them there.
"I get it," he said. "I'm a photographer."
He paused.
Then he inhaled.
"So," he said. Another pause as he looked me in the eye, smiling. Recruiters are one of the main gatekeepers for the hedge fund and private equity industries. Some jobs are posted on employment aggregator sites; many are not. After a résumé screen, a phone call, and the current interview to make sure I would comport myself in just the right way, finally, he let me in. "I'm working on a search I think you'd be perfect for," he said. "Have you heard of Carbon?"
I hadn't-but I had heard of Argon, a hedge fund that had long and widely been seen as financial royalty. I asked Peter if the two funds were related.
"Correct." The founder of Carbon had cut his teeth at Argon. "Carbon, they are a rock star of a fund. And yet"-Peter raised an index finger and lowered his voice-"under the radar. We never see any Carbon résumés floating around because once people get there, they stay. Forever. No one leaves." He let a few seconds pass. "The job is the sole assistant to the founder of the Firm, Boone Prescott. He's a billionaire. And he's young." Peter glanced down at his notebook. "Boone is, from all accounts, the nicest. And Jen, who runs his family office and personal life-she's an absolute sweetheart. The job is essentially being Boone's right-hand person: you'd manage his time and business life, help with some research, and also provide support to one of his analysts. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Can I pitch you to them?"
I left Peter’s office and went back home to a dorm room I’d rented through NYU. I was working on a short story about a woman in the middle of a quarter-life crisis when I received an email from Peter: “Pls call me!” Jen wanted me to come in at two thirty, in two hours. Could I make it?
I had had plans to meet someone for lunch, a woman named Ruth. She was one of two Americans who had sponsored my father so he could leave China and come to the United States for his graduate studies in the eighties. I felt I owed much of my life to Ruth's kindness, although I had never had the chance to share this sentiment with her. Now that I was in New York, I had reached out a week earlier in hopes of expressing my gratitude and catching up. My mother was in awe of Ruth. In Mom's telling: Ruth, after being a homemaker and raising two kids, realized how her kids respected her husband more than herself because he had a career and she did not. So, she got divorced, went back to school, and later taught at a small liberal arts college in New Jersey. It was during those years that she traveled to Anhui, one of the poorer and less-developed provinces in the middle of China; there, she met my dad, who served as her translator.
Ruth was in her garage in New Jersey when I called to cancel. "You really caught me in the nick of time," she said. She did not guilt or yell at me, though I felt her disappointment seep through the phone. I was disappointed too. But I could not say no. You don't say no to Carbon.
I headed back uptown to meet with Jen in a building near Barneys on Madison Avenue. Never before had I had a same-day, in-person interview after applying for a job. I arrived on the tenth floor and rang the bell. Maya opened the frosted-glass doors. I knew about Maya; Peter had told me that she had once been an assistant to the head of a mini-major film studio. Maya seemed warm and maternal, like someone whose fuse might extend all the way to the moon. After bringing me a bottle of water, she dropped me in a room to wait for Jen.
I had spent the short hours prior to this interview reading anything on Boone I could find. Carbon did not have a website or a Wikipedia page, and Boone was not active on social media. He did not give interviews. He did not sit for photos. Stories about him featured squiggly lines coalescing into caricatures of what appeared to be very different people. All this did not stop the financial press from crowning him Wall Street aristocracy or the society pages from speculating about his wife and kids and homes and money.
About the money: In the early part of the decade, Boone debuted on a prominent list of the youngest billionaires in America. What was special about Boone was his age, his net worth, and his industry. If Boone continued compounding his wealth at, say, a rate of 20 percent per year-a conservative estimate given some of his reported returns; a number that does not even factor in carry, the profits he'd receive from owning and managing the funds-he'd have a net worth of over $5 trillion by the time he reached the age of Warren Buffett.
About the Firm: I found a dribble of information. A leading financial publication had called Carbon the world's hottest hedge fund. Another had named it one of the world's top-performing large hedge funds, ranking it among other hedge fund titans and their flagships, like Ray Dalio's Pure Alpha II and Ken Griffin's Citadel. Of note, I could find nothing negative written about Boone or Carbon anywhere-in contrast to Dalio and Griffin and their firms, about which I had read articles mentioning subpoenas tied to possible insider trading, as well as employee turnover tied to a culture wherein the biggest insult was to call someone suboptimal.
About Jen: There was no information. No LinkedIn, no Facebook, no Twitter.
About the position: I received no job description.
A minute later, Jen walked in, apologizing for the look of their suite. She and her colleagues had just moved into the new family-office space. I stood up to shake her hand and noticed her well-tailored outfit, mid-heel pumps, and silky brown hair. My mind flashed to the iconic The Devil Wears Prada scene in which a post-makeover Anne Hathaway struts through the office wearing Chanel. I looked down at my suit, which I had bought on sale for my business-school interview years ago and which had ripped on the way there (later, Mom sewed up the tear on the back slit of my pencil skirt); I made immediate plans to go shopping.
Jen mentioned she was from Missouri. As I walked her through my background, her eyes appeared to twinkle. "That makes complete sense," she said after I told her I had tried being on the investment side. That I'd loved it, then hated it, then realized I wanted to do something else.
When Jen asked me the question Peter said she would, about why I would want to be an assistant and not a hedge fund manager myself, I was prepared. "I have other passions that interest me more," I said. "At heart, I'm a nerd. My favorite class in college was optimization. I'd love to optimize someone's life and help someone great do great things."
An hour after I left, I received an email from Peter: "Please call me when you get this." Boone wanted to meet me as soon as possible. When could I come in?
Two days later I made my way to Carbon’s offices, which were in an iridescent skyscraper where Midtown meets Central Park meets Upper West Side. Carbon occupied the entire forty-sixth floor of a building home to the behemoths of the money-management industry. After walking through the travertine lobby, past a Brâncuși sculpture, I rode the elevator up.
A receptionist buzzed me in and welcomed me with "How can I help you?" There were actually two of them: Charlotte and Olivia, both blond, super pretty, looking like they definitely shopped at Barneys. I made eye contact with one and then the other and said that I was here today to see Boone. Charlotte, the one who'd greeted me, sprang up from her chair and said, "Please follow me." As I followed her, I noticed her straight, voluminous hair with curled ends bouncing so perfectly that I wondered whether professional blowouts were a job requirement. I stepped into a large conference room named Paget and took in the early-evening view.
The finishes were opulent-marble, glass, steel, wood, and leather in shades of beige and cream, tinseled with cobalt-but that was not what got me. Most offices I had known had harsh fluorescent lighting reminding you that you were hard at work. Here, the light raying from the seamless ceiling, softened through distance and angles and filters, glowed. It mixed with nature, with its reflection off Central Park, and caused whoever was in the room to feel alive with the same starry force that made the view-the sky, the moon, heaven, and earth.
"Can I get you anything to drink?" Charlotte asked. "We have water, coffee, tea, soda . . ."
"Water, please."
"Sparkling or still?"
"Sparkling."
"Ice or no ice?"
"Ice."
Charlotte walked to the other side of Paget, where eight abstract paintings in sky blue and ivory hung on the wall. Below them, a credenza. On the credenza, a phone, some succulents, an iPad that controlled the audiovisuals of the room, and a tray that held a bucket of ice, a glass carafe of ice water, and a thermal carafe of hot water. Charlotte slid open the credenza to reveal a minifridge. She pulled out a bottle of sparkling water and a short glass tumbler, filled the glass with ice, set the glass down in front of me on a metal coaster, and walked out of the room.
I sat down on a plush leather armchair. Not at the head of the table and not at the foot, but one chair away from the head so that, if Boone did sit there, he and I would be perpendicular. To the north, my left, was a wall of windows. On the closer end, I saw a meadow. Beyond that, a lake, a lawn, a museum, a reservoir, and the entirety of Central Park, which, from six hundred feet up, looked like a rug of treetops. Even farther away I saw the Bronx and the George Washington Bridge. I saw a pure horizon.
I drank my water and waited for Boone. My hands did not sweat, my pulse did not race. Boone would be the first billionaire I'd meet, but by then-I was twenty-nine-money had lost much of its sheen to me.
When I was twenty-five, working as an analyst at Fidelity Investments, I made over three hundred thousand dollars. I took my bonus, went to the Bloomingdale’s outside of Boston, tried on dozens of pairs of shoes, and left empty-handed. Some part of me felt jealous of people for whom money seemed to bring joy, ease, and happiness. A confirmation that they were on the right path. Gold diggers, I envied them-and anyone else who knew exactly what they wanted. Right around then, I started dating someone with money, the same man who, over time, feared that my career aspirations might conflict with his plans for me to be a doll in his house. We flew in his family’s private jet to his family’s multiple homes. But the more money I made and the more I was surrounded by wealth, the more I found myself recoiling from it all. I planned my getaway and quit Fidelity after four and a half years, hoping to do a pivot. Two months later I started on a new path at the University of Pennsylvania, enrolled in a joint-degree program between the School of Arts & Sciences and the Wharton School of Business. When I arrived on campus, I found myself steeped in a culture that seemed to prioritize drinking and partying over working and studying. So suboptimal, so inefficient. A colossal waste of time. This was the culture from which I was trying to escape, evinced by an offhand remark a coworker at Fidelity made to me one night: “I basically sit on my ass and do nothing and make millions. What could be better than that?”
Product details
- ASIN : B0CD3FR29D
- Publisher : Penguin Press (February 13, 2024)
- Publication date : February 13, 2024
- Language : English
- File size : 4009 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 349 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #147,239 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Carrie Sun was born in China and raised in Michigan. She holds an MFA in creative writing from The New School. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband. Private Equity is her first book.
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Customers find the book easy to read and captivating. They also appreciate the depth of content and insight into the millennial writer's life.
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Customers find the book brilliant, brilliant, and very well written.
"...The read is excellent, reading about her childhood in Michigan, as a student, her career path, romance path was compelling...." Read more
"Insightful read about an executive assistant's experience working at a hedge fund. Overworked and under appreciated, but apparently not on purpose...." Read more
"...Well worth reading" Read more
"This book is superb. Carrie is a gifted writer and observer of her world, which just so happens to be one few people are invited into...." Read more
Customers find the plot captivating and compelling. They also say the story is exceptional and shines a light.
"...Private Equity offers readers the clear-eyed, honest narrative of one super-bright and ambitious young professional diving into the great American..." Read more
"I couldn’t put this down. Exceptionally written and a captivating story with incredible detail and sense of place...." Read more
"...I'm confused on why she wrote it... it's not a literary marvel and has no substance." Read more
"Compelling memoir..." Read more
Customers appreciate the depth of the content. They mention that the book is written by a millennial writer with deep insight and real potential.
"...marks an impressive literary debut by a millennial writer with deep insight and real potential. Read it and see how you respond to it...." Read more
"Brilliantly researched and written expose of a legendary boom and bust hedge fund along with a colorful description of isenior management as it..." Read more
"...Keeps your attention and very well written. Great insight into the internal workings of a high pressure job on Wall Street.Recommend highly." Read more
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Private Equity, the memoir, makes no mention of the current financial appetite for canine care and clogged toilets because, as I learned, hedge funds play a more complex and high-stakes game than that of standard private equity firms. And while the book does briefly explain hedging and leveraging, it's neither the work's strong suit nor its focus. What this book does well is shine a clear bright light on the daily grind -- the look and feel and wear and tear -- of an elite hedge fund on the its firm's assistants. If you're looking for an over-the-top Hollywood-style depiction of the excesses of Wall Street, you won't find it in Carrie Sun's memoir. What you will find, however, is something more informative, balanced, and real. That's the beauty of Sun's literary debut. She tells it like she experienced it, without satire or even a chip on her shoulder. And the story she tells is as cautionary as it is illuminating and perceptive.
When Sun received an offer to work as the assistant to a billionaire hedge fund founder, she accepted the position with confidence. As an MIT alumna who had graduated in a jaw-dropping three years with dual degrees in math and finance, she was no stranger to steep learning curves. Her intent and the fervent desire of her boss was to put in at least five years. But the realities of her position soon set in and, with them, sobering truths. They don't pay you the big bucks just because you graduated from elite universities with the appropriate degrees. The salaries, bonuses, and steady supply of big-ticket perks exist to compensate for insidious job tolls. And to make it incredibly difficult to walk away from them once you realize their effects on your physical and mental health.
Private Equity offers readers the clear-eyed, honest narrative of one super-bright and ambitious young professional diving into the great American rat race. Sun's story could easily apply to any highly competent person starting out in any exceedingly lucrative and competitive field today in which high stress and long hours are not only condoned but also glorified. Anyone who works or has worked in investment banking, consulting and Big Law, for example, is likely to be able to relate on some level. Anyone acting as the go-to assistant for powerful or high-profile people in almost any field will catch the similarities, too. And those considering these kinds of career paths should want to read this book before they take the leap, if they're as smart as their diplomas and resumes imply.
Private Equity marks an impressive literary debut by a millennial writer with deep insight and real potential. Read it and see how you respond to it. The story may strike a nerve and, like Sun, move you to try to change a thing or two about your own work-life balance or the job inequities you and your co-workers have experienced of late. Or it may inspire you to stop blindly chasing the tokens of status you thought would make you happy and, with eyes wide open, start following your heart. Either way, this read is sure to be good for you. I highly recommend it.
I am reading and will finish it but tbh, it's like "they worked me too hard, were oblivous to what they created and I finally quit". I guess maybe the details are mildy entertaining but who could remember exactly which conference rooms they interviewed in all those years ago?
I am impressed and empathic to Sun's life experience but the hype around this book is, imo, the result of an excellent publicist and the exact system (who knows who and how do they get the 'who' to say the right thing?) she decries.
Top reviews from other countries
In a nutshell - intelligent woman goes to work as an assistant to a hedge fund billionaire, works long hours, gets burnt out, leaves.
If you’re looking for any insight into the hedge fund world, this isn’t for you. There is very little detail on any of the actual workings of the business side. High level references to returns, presentations and companies but very superficial.
The book does touch on elements of her past. Abuse, rape, disordered eating, stalking all feature so if these are sensitive for you, just to be aware. There are all covered only briefly and at a high level though. The author is very factual in her storytelling (based on reading the book, a reflection of her personality) so even though these are heavy topics I didn’t feel that much emotion come through.
Book is fine for a quick read but was hoping for something more substantial. I’d wait until it comes out in paperback and is cheaper before purchasing. Wouldn’t say it’s worth it for the full price hardback!
However, the extended parts where the author complains about her parents (probably with some justification) are less so.
The author clearly holds writing as a cherished ambition (fair enough) but several passages are overblown and self-indulgent.