The world of private equity, as described in Carrie Sun’s memoir, brings to mind less the muscular jockeying of HBO’s Succession, and instead the quiet intensity of a Sofia Coppola film: all glittering surfaces and cagey alienation. When Sun arrives at Carbon, a secretive hedge fund (the name has been changed), she finds offices with sweeping views of Central Park; a library with heavy drapes and velvet couches; a bathroom with marble sinks and stone walls. After employees complain about the state of the toilets, the firm hires a woman to clean them after each and every use.
Sun, 29 at the time, is at a crossroads. She previously worked as a financial analyst before enrolling in, then dropping out of, an MBA programme. Engaged to a man who “wanted me to prioritise him and his career and not work myself”, she is taking a fiction workshop in Manhattan when she is cold-contacted by a recruiter. She responds, saying: “I want a job so I can afford to figure out my life.” At the end of her first day as assistant to Carbon founder and billionaire Boone Prescott (also a pseudonym), high on the prospect of independence, Sun messages the recruiter: “loooong day, BUT I F’ing LOVE MY JOB”. Right after that, she tells a friend that she had “no time to even pee”.
