Young Money Quotes

“No longer are job applicants to Wall Street firms asked, “When you meet a woman, what interests you most about her?” as applicants to Merrill Lynch’s 1972 brokerage trainee class were. (The answer the bank was looking for was “her beauty.”)”
― Kevin Roose, Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits

“He told the associate that there was a lot of economic value in the work the desk did—that helping companies hedge their energy costs was a legitimate function of the capital markets, and that Goldman was the best place on the Street to do it. The associate took a moment to contemplate, then said, “You know, helping the world is great and all, but you need to be motivated by money.” He’d said it so bluntly that Jeremy attributed it to the booze, but the next day, as he came down from his hangover, he couldn’t help but think that the associate might have been telling the truth.”
― Kevin Roose, Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits

“You sort of lose your nonfinance friends,” he said. “My friend might be in Teach for America, and they can’t afford to go out to the places I go out. It’s shitty, because for the first time, it’s almost like money matters. In college, you’re all living in that dorm. Here, there’s hierarchy. And that level of spending, all the time, means that you just naturally grow away from people who don’t work in the industry.”
― Kevin Roose, Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits

“by blitzing students with information and making the application process as simple as dropping a résumé into a box, by following up relentlessly and promising to inform applicants about job offers in the fall of their senior year—months before firms in most other industries—Wall Street banks had made themselves the obvious destinations for students at top-tier colleges who are confused about their careers, don’t want to lock themselves in to a narrow preprofessional track by going to law or medical school, and are looking to put off the big decisions for two years while they figure things out. Banks, in other words, have become extremely skilled at appealing to the anxieties of overachieving young people and inserting themselves as the solution to those worries. And the irony is that although we think of Wall Street as a risk-loving business, the recruiting process often appeals most to the terrified and insecure.”
― Kevin Roose, Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits

“Merrill Lynch, on the other hand, was a white-shoe firm with a proud history of elitism. Its investment bank was blue-blooded in temperament and composition, recruited primarily from Ivy League schools, and did only the more lucrative work of advising corporations, issuing securities, and managing money for ultra-wealthy individuals. In fact, many at Merrill Lynch considered commercial banking—the business of taking deposits, issuing mortgages, and giving loans to regular people—a lower form of commerce.”
― Kevin Roose, Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits

“But what if Wall Street doesn't just attract preexisting douchebags, but actively draws normal people into an inescapable vortex of douchebaggery?”
― Kevin Roose, Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits