Private Equity

Carrie Sun, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, graduated early from MIT and spent four years as a financial analyst, including a stint at Fidelity, before becoming the only assistant to the founder of a fund she calls Carbon, run by a billionaire. Sun changed the names of most people and firms. Fortune noted that the boss resembles Chase Coleman of Tiger Global; Sun declined to confirm this, and the firm did not comment.

She argues that the problem is the system, not one bad boss, and she still calls her boss the best of his kind. Most Wall Street memoirs come from principals and traders. This one comes from the support seat, and it shows how a top-tier fund runs lean, values return on time above everything and leans on a family-style culture.

Reviewers had reservations. Kirkus called the book middling and some of its self-reflective passages tiresome. Publishers Weekly found it thought-provoking but undercooked, with stretches where the momentum drags. There is almost nothing here about how the fund invests.

Read it if you are a junior analyst or banker weighing a lucrative, all-consuming job, or a manager who runs a thin team on goodwill.

1. The principal's time is the asset. At a top fund, the assistant's job is to turn the founder's hours into returns. Sun shows how that framing turns a support role into round-the-clock work.
2. Watch for scope creep without trade-offs. New responsibilities kept arriving and nothing came off her plate. Sun argues that added duties should come with relief elsewhere and with pay that reflects the value added.
3. Perks are a retention tool. Bonuses, raises and luxury access kept her in place as demands rose. Know what you are being paid to tolerate before you accept it.
4. Individual fixes don't solve structural overload. Meditation, the boss's self-help reading and massages did nothing for her burnout. A firm built on scarcity staffing produces exhaustion by design.
5. Modesty can be a career cost. Sun contrasts her background with her boss's pedigree and argues that quiet competence, especially from women, often goes unrecognized unless people advocate for their own work.

The memoir runs roughly chronologically, from the decision to take the job to the decision to walk away.

1. Restless at 29. Sun traces her path from an immigrant household in Michigan to MIT and analyst work that paid well but that she increasingly recoiled from. She takes the assistant job partly to fund a move toward writing.
2. Getting in. Fourteen interviews lead to Carbon, a crossover fund that mixes hedge fund, private equity and venture investing. At first she sees its founder as one of the good capitalists.
3. An extension of his brain. Her duties pile up: speeches, slide decks, meeting prep, calendars and logistics, along with long office days, weekend work and a world of perks where money seems to fix nearly everything.
4. The toll. Her identity merges with the job. Her weight changes, an eating disorder returns, and meditation, self-help books and spa visits fail to help, while her parents add pressure about her personal life.
5. Breaking free. Tired of the founder's expectations and the firm's family-style culture, she leaves over his objections and rethinks what it means to waste a life.