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Animal House meets Liar's Poker in this hysterically funny, often unbelievable, and absolutely, positively true account of life at DLJ, one of the hottest investment banks on Wall Street. I cried, laughed, was hot and bothered, and I loved every bit of this installment. I couldn’t ask for a better ending to this trilogy.”—Under the Covers Book Blog
Coming Cleanprovides a realistic, sometimes heartbreaking glimpse at the simultaneous frailty and strength in a relationship.”—Heroes and HeartbreakersThe book did peter out in little in the end and became more of the more of the same. You can only read about stupid people and their bad life choices so much before questioning you own value. The most amazing thing about the banking life, though, is not the hours. It's how useless most of those hours are. From what I gathered, the associates and analysts do maybe 4-8 hours a day of real, productive work. The rest of the hours are spent making mindless changes for MD's, only for the MD's and Vice Presidents to change their mind and throw out a lot of that work. Associates spent a lot more time in meetings and travel than I expected, typically just to bring pitch books and give a formidable presence for the bank. They were in for a surprise. For behind the walls of Wall Street's firms lies a stratum of stunted, overworked, abused, and in the end, very well-compensated, but very frustrated men and women. Monkey Business takes readers behind the scenes at Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette (DLJ), one of Wall Street's hottest firms of the 90s, from the interview process to the courting of clients to bonus time. It's a glimpse of a side of the business the financial periodicals don't talk about -- 20-hour work days, trips across the country where associates do nothing except carry the pitch book, strip clubs at night, inflated salaries, and high-powered, unforgettable personalities. My father taught me many years ago not to believe my own bullshit. Well, we didn't heed this sage advice, and we were so deep in our own garbage that we were suffocating underneath its weight. All of us, as associates, made ourselves believe that we were different and special, We would soon learn the real truth., But until then, we felt great about ourselves and our choice to careers."
This book did a great job of describing what beginning I-bankers do. Unfortunately, the clear bias that they didn't like their jobs is too strong. Nothing good was said about any Managing Directors. Now surely, we could find some social, redeeming value in a person you worked for when you worked for so many? Or maybe controversy and criticism sells better. What is a specific real world application that you will be able to make from what you learned in this book? Like most other young business school graduates, John Rolfe and Peter Troob thought that life in a major investment banking firm would make their wildest dreams come true -- it would be fast-paced, intellectually challenging, glamorous, and, best of all, lucrative. Wallace Edwards was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art (1980). His paintings and illustrations are found in public and private collections, books, magazines, and on public display in Canada and the United States. Edwards’ clients include the Metro Toronto Zoo, the City of Toronto, the B.C. Ministry of the Environment, the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, the Canadian Wildlife Federation, and various magazine publishers. He has been the invited guest speaker at conferences, literary events, schools and libraries. He finds visiting with students from kindergarten to grade six especially enjoyable, where his presentations consist of reading, discussions, and drawing. It reveals a lot of the discrepancies between what people think the banking jobs are and what they actually are – instead of engaged intellectually to come up with good investment ideas, you spend most of your time copying pasting and reusing previous writings to create pitch books that no one really reads, instead of “living large” you’re barely living – getting no sleep, no sex, no meaningful social life just doesn’t fit the definition of a good life no matter how much money you’re making, so on and so forth with many other examples of how reality departs from expectation, ranging from the corporate travelling experiences to meeting with clients (the ideal would be to meeting with clients around the world to understand their business, but the crazy schedule only makes you so tired that no information can get in you head, and you learn nothing about the business, and visiting 7 countries in 5 days shouldn’t be called travelling.)Este libro narra la historia de dos junior associate bankers (= esclavos) de la empresa DLJ (Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette). Cuando salieron de su MBA en Stanford (¡cuidado, Raquel!) y fueron contratados por una de los mejores bancos de inversión, nuestros protagonistas creían que se iban a comer el mundo. El sueldo medio para el primer año en una empresa de Wall Street es de seis cifras (sin contar los decimales). Pero descubrieron que la realidad es siempre mucho peor de lo que la imaginamos. En el libro se relatan historias de terror sin fin acerca de los métodos de trabajo de los bancos, de las horas que hay que echarle, de cómo nadie valora tu trabajo aunque te paguen cientos de miles de dólares al año por él, y de cómo casi nadie puede soportarlo y acaban dejando la empresa. A mi me sorprendía bastante que alguien quisiera dejar un trabajo en el que gana cuatrocientos mil euros al año sólo porque "hay que trabajar mucho y luego nadie te lo agradece". Conozco trabajos así por quince mil euros al año. Luego ves que, en realidad, son muchos los factores que hacen que la vida media de un asociado en una empresa de Wall Street no llegue a los dos años. Cito un pasaje: La mayoría de la gente tiene jornadas de trabajo que pueden dividirse en dos partes: antes de comer y después de comer. Antes de comer se hace gran parte del trabajo duro del día, y cuando vuelves de comer sabes que, aunque tengas trabajo, lo que te queda antes de irte a casa será coser y cantar. Nosotros, en cambio, teníamos una jornada que podía dividirse en antes de comer, después de comer, antes de cenar, después de cenar, antes de la media noche y después de la media noche. Todos los días del año. Incluidos muchos fines de semana. Y era imposible dormir desde dos noches antes de la entrega de una oferta. Siempre llegabas a las reuniones como un zombi, tras haber estado las últimas 48 horas trabajando.A lo anterior se suma que, por ejemplo, a Troob le anularon tres veces las vacaciones cuando ya iba camino del aeropuerto con 15 días de vacaciones en Grecia por delante. Estuvo a punto de costarle el matrimonio. Los vicepresidentes y los asociados senior eran todos divorciados, muchos de ellos alcohólicos, sin tiempo libre, que vivían por y para el trabajo, sin tener una vida propia fuera de él. Rolfe, que es normalmente quien narra la historia, repite constantemente "no quiero ser así dentro de 10 años, no quiero ser así dentro de 10 años", cada vez que narra una anécdota relacionada con los que llevan más tiempo en la empresa. The book goes into extreme detail of the mundane tasks of an I-banker, ie, copy duties, word processing duties. Do we really need a chapter on these subjects? They leave the impression that they never used their brain at all and the whole profession is a shame. Isn't that a little strong? I particularly like his comment in due diligence that beginning attorneys are lower than I-Bankers. I thought that was a little self-serving.
Members and Benefactors go free– find out more about becoming a member or supporting the Horniman as a Benefactor. In other words, Monkey Business reads somewhat like a long MBA case study about a mismanaged company who promotes top performers rather than good managers (although it is far, far more interesting than a case study). The MD's have all the hallmarks of bosses from hell. They don't understand what junior bankers actually do and they motivate by crucifying for mistakes and missed deadlines while taking all the credit when there's success.What is the one thing that you think you will do differently or think differently about since you read the book? To many, the book will be most startling in just how unglamorous the Investment Banking life actually is. Even the rainmakers at the top of the heap, the managing directors, don't necessarily live a glamorous life. While junior bankers have to grovel to the MD's, the MD's themselves spend their lives groveling to clients and the buyside, trying to justify their existence with pretty pitch books and fonts that are just right. Smokin’ hot, toe-curling, yummilicious! Yup . . . just a few words to describe this hot, hot read.”—The Reading Cafe They have been rivals who fought until the bitter end and lovers who know every sensual inch of each other’s bodies. Now sports agents Cassidy Whalen and Shaw Matthews are about to become the one thing they never expected to be: parents. But this new dynamic to their relationship threatens to fizzle the sizzling desire that once held them in thrall to each other. If salvation is only a forbidden fantasy away, then Shaw and the woman he loves must embark on the adventure of their lives. Shaw Matthews plays to win, and he intends to snag a coveted partnership at San Diego’s hottest sports agency by signing America’s top athlete. Only one woman stands in his way: rival agent Cassidy Whalen. But eliminating the competition will be Shaw’s pleasure when he concocts an ingenious plan to seduce Cassidy and show the beautiful ballbreaker who’s the better man for the job. That is, until Cassidy turns the tables—and their steamy encounters start breaking all the rules.