Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits Kindle Edition

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.

Roose's main agenda is convincing us that everyone who stays in banking is, or eventually becomes, an amoral psychopath (and the natural corollary is that college grads should go work at Facebook or a startup instead). Senior people appear in his book only as caricatures: they behave reprehensibly, showing up only to say something truly despicable or utterly tone deaf. Roose claims he couldn't get a single relatively senior person on Wall Street to talk to him about what it's like to work there, but it's hard to believe he tried very hard: after all, his sources are all anonymized. So he instead crashes Kappa Beta Phi, and tells us that every plutocrat is just like the people there, although some might be better at hiding it.

A lot of books have been written since the financial crisis that purport to tell us what is broken on Wall Street. Many of them do a better job than Young Money showing us what has gone wrong. I wish Roose had spent less time sermonizing and judging his friends' choices, and focused more on telling us what their lives are truly like and why.

This book offers incredible insight into the lure of Wall Street for young professionals and explains the reasons for why despite all the bad publicity that Wall Street has gotten in the past couple of years, smart young people are still flocking to financial jobs.

Pros:

- Quick read. Written by a journalist, the language is very accessible and enjoyable.

- No stereotypical traps or cliches. More often than not, Wall Street books are riddled with cliche's and contain information that has already been widely reported and offers nothing insightful to a reader.

- The subjects of the book are diverse! This is the book's biggest plus point. The author focuses on 8 different young professionals who he interviewed over the past 3 years. And for a change, they actually represent a good cross-section of society- different races, women, socio-economic backgrounds etc..

- The banks and divisions focused on are also diverse. The book examines different banks and their different sub-divisions, which is good for those who may want to learn about the workings of the financial industry.

- It can be difficult to write a non-fiction book without strong opinions about your subject. Few authors manage to avoid that trap, and Kevin Roose luckily happens to be one of them. He humanizes his subjects without passing too much judgement either way. I found myself invested in the people he was describing and caring about their narrative without any unnecessary intrusions from the author's own thoughts.

Cons (Edited):

- Almost None! This book is like a sociological study on finance today and young finance professionals that for once does not paint 22 year olds as greedy sociopaths, but instead more accurately portrays them as 20-something bright, passionate, somewhat confused and lost, college students who are trying to navigate the system to the best of their abilities.

- Upon re-evaluation of the book, I do have to say that the one con I can think of is that somehow the book lacks the requisite gravitas to be taken seriously in a way that would cement it's status in this genre (e.g. Liar's Poker, Too Big To Fail). It is obviously a well-written, well-researched and well put together book but it lacks that certain element that would have elevated it to the top of the list in this field. Having said that, I still think it is a very informative book that does full justice to its subjects and genre, and I can't think of similar books on this topic.