Young Money

Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits

By: Kevin Roose

Narrated by: Nicholas Tecosky

Becoming a young Wall Street banker is like pledging the world's most lucrative and soul-crushing fraternity.

Every year, thousands of eager college graduates are hired by the world's financial giants, where they're taught the secrets of making obscene amounts of money-- as well as how to dress, talk, date, drink, and schmooze like real financiers.

Young Money is the inside story of this well-guarded world. Kevin Roose, New York magazine business writer and author of the critically acclaimed The Unlikely Disciple, spent more than three years shadowing eight entry-level workers at Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and other leading investment firms. Roose chronicled their triumphs and disappointments, their million-dollar trades and runaway Excel spreadsheets, and got an unprecedented (and unauthorized) glimpse of the financial world's initiation process.

Roose's young bankers are exposed to the exhausting workloads, huge bonuses, and recreational drugs that have always characterized Wall Street life. But they experience something new, too: an industry forever changed by the massive financial collapse of 2008. And as they get their Wall Street educations, they face hard questions about morality, prestige, and the value of their work.

Young Money is more than an expose of excess; it's the story of how the financial crisis changed a generation-and remade Wall Street from the bottom up.

Critic reviews

Praise for The Unlikely Disciple:

"Well-written, thoughtful, and surprisingly three-dimensional . . . The charm and emotional heft of Roose's book lies in his honesty. . . a refreshing cease-fire in the wearying culture wars, likely holding surprises for anyone-theist, atheist, or somewhere in between." --A.V. Club, The Onion

"[A] vivid, sunny, and skeptical portrait of life among the saved." --New York Times

"What makes THE UNLIKELY DISCIPLE remarkable is that it doesn't take the cheap shot or make the easy joke . . . never anything but fair." --DailyBeast.com

"Very funny . . . I loved this book." --Slate.com

Wow, the effort taken to make this book possible

if you want to know what it's like as a first year kid on the street. it's real to the bone and lays out what is up with very little opinion other then the obvious.

Awesome book!

Really great story. Very well written. A real inside look into the investment banking world.

Cry Babies

Listening to these stories I wish I would’ve had the opportunity these young people had. I think political correctness has made these young people soft. When did it become a crime to have lots of money? Cry babies die, not fit to survive!
The good thing about this book is I’ve learned that people like them can be taken advantage of.

Millenial view on WS

Written post 2008 collapse, this is a young, college indoctrinated journalists viewpoint on people who choose to enter the financial space. Always interesting to learn what young people think of someone who chooses to work their ass off and get paid well to do it. Worth the read for anyone but be prepared to learn that capitalism isn't for everyone.

Tell me something I didn't know

What did you like best about Young Money? What did you like least?

I can appreciate the amount of time and research spent conducting the interviews of these Young people. Honestly though, who didn't know that being young on Wall Street was a mentally and physically exhausting grind the first few years, but the money makes it all worth it in the end.

Would you recommend Young Money to your friends? Why or why not?

I wouldn't recommend Young Money to any friends. We're all tired of listening to stories of the whiny, entitled, Millenials shirking hard work as they try to find some form of altruistic meaning in life.