Author Carrie Sun
When Does a High-Status Job Stop Being Worth It?
An excerpt from Carrie Sun’s gripping new memoir, Private Equity.
When does a job that offers money, status, and endless luxury perks stop being worth it? In her gripping new memoir, Private Equity, author Carrie Sun details her time as the assistant to the billionaire founder of one of the world’s most prestigious hedge funds. What initially seems like a dream job eventually chips away at her physical and mental health, forcing her to reckon with the very real costs of high-level career achievement.
In the following excerpt, Carrie details a conversation she had with Jen, the COO of the firm’s founder’s family office, in which she first expressed her doubts about her role and future. Read on for a taste of her insightful reflections and get your copy of Private Equity here.
On the evening of October 30th, we’re hosting a book talkback event with Carrie Sun at our Upper West Side Store. Learn more and RSVP.
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In late August I met up with Jen.
For our first hang outside of work the previous fall, Jen and I had gone to hot yoga (so fitting a suggestion from the woman who ran the Prescotts’ personal life), after which we got brunch and bonded over a dislike of social media. Jen told me she had once worked for one of the most powerful women in tech in a similar capacity as she did now for Boone [Carrie’s boss and the founder of the hedge fund]. She also told me she had never had a Facebook account. I remembered going to an event in Brookline, Massachusetts, when Lean In was published. I was dating Josh [Carrie’s ex-fiancé] then while trying to forge my own path, feeling judged by those around me for leaning out. Nearly all of my life I had been labeled an overachiever; two years after walking off the b-school track, I perceived people labeling me an underachiever. I also remembered thinking about the book’s critics, about what it would take to work like her, wondering what kinds of hidden help Sandberg and other top female executives were receiving. As I got to know Jen, I knew the answer.
Jen had graduated from an elite university. Not only was she book-smart—she remembered every minute detail I had ever told her, including those not germane to our work—but she was insanely people-smart. One of the first questions she asked me when we sat down to brunch was “How are you getting along with Sloane [another assistant at the hedge fund, who had been unhelpful during Carrie’s onboarding and early time there]?” She never pushed, only observed, and asked me question after question while listening with the heartfelt thrill of a perfect first date. She was the only person at Carbon [the hedge fund] who never, not once, made me feel like I was wasting my potential. She was also the only person who knew the full extent and intensity of my job.
It was summer in the city. Jen and I decided to take a walk after work. As we circled the reservoir in the park, I reflected on a year in my job and, for the first time, took the risk of sharing a thought with someone from work, about work, that was not 100 percent positive.
“The volume is maybe too much,” I said. “I feel maybe burned out.” “I don’t know how you do it,” Jen said. “When he goes sixty, you go sixty. When he goes a hundred, you go a hundred.” Jen had used this car metaphor before to describe my and Boone’s working relationship. She had repeatedly made it known that I was doing much more in scope than previous assistants. But to match Boone step for step—to work like him—what were the costs to me? I did not have a staffer to pack my suitcases or to sort and clean and hang up my wardrobes. I did not have a runner to deliver my gloves to the office when I forgot them so I could later text as I walked home because I wanted fresh air (while my driver stood by in front of the building, should I change my mind). “Are you able to handle your workload for Gabe [an investment analyst at the hedge fund]?”
“Boone could underplay himself and remain highly effective because everyone knew that he was the founder of Carbon. When I—a woman, an Asian American immigrant, an employee and not an owner—underplayed myself, I sensed people viewing me as a pushover.”
Imploding with shame, I confessed, “No.” Gabe had gotten the okay to hire someone to help him, but he was so busy he did not have time to complete the recruiting process. He had asked me to pitch in more and more, and I did, volunteering my time because I found doing deep dives on enterprise software names much more stimulating than filing expenses. I explained to Jen that Gabe’s calendar was just as busy as Boone’s; no one’s calendar had any slack. Boone, Gabe, the three other PMs—they were all the hardest-working people I knew. “Plus, Gabe’s so understanding that I just end up feeling awful,” I said. “He’s always coming in second; that’s not fair to him. But managing Boone’s life is already more than one full-time job.” I breathed, slowly, in and out. “Boone is so nice. Honestly, I like him so much. But I think . . .”
The name of the game at Carbon, at least with Boone, was modesty, downplaying, understatement. Acting like a start-up when you’re the clear incumbent because concealing your position—being underestimated—lets you have a much bigger playbook. I had been trying to calibrate my philosophy to fully match Boone’s, which seemed eminently reasonable and empirically so successful, but lately I could not shake the feeling that I had been taken advantage of. For instance: Boone once told me to ask IT to do a task, and, when I asked the staff, they said no. I asked if they could please try to figure it out. They quoted me a time frame of over a day and a price tag of over three thousand dollars for new software they would have to download. I said nothing to IT (or to Boone). I thanked them for their time, hung up, and did the task myself in about a minute using a free app on my phone. It was not about this one minute I had spent doing someone else’s work; it was that this was a pattern occurring day after day. Boone could underplay himself and remain highly effective because everyone knew that he was the founder of Carbon. When I—a woman, an Asian American immigrant, an employee and not an owner—underplayed myself, I sensed people viewing me as a pushover.
I did not share any of this with Jen. I went on: “I love working with Boone. I don’t need credit, I don’t need power; I just need someone to recognize the work behind the work and notice when it might be too much.”
“Carrie,” Jen said. “You are doing way too much. Talk to Boone. You should offload some responsibility. At a minimum, you should not support Gabe. Other people like Boone have a team of assistants. You are just one person, and you split your time.”
“I’m sure it’ll be better the second year,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
