Monkey Business

April 3, 2000
As eager-beaver business school students, Rolfe and Troob garnered job offers as junior associates at the elite Wall Street investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, lured by dreams of wealth, glamour and power. Readers whose fascination with Wall Street shenanigans has been fueled by Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker will find this thorough rundown of an investment bank associate's daily routine sobering. By the time Rolfe and Troob were able to discern the key fact that the "investment banking community has long been an oligopoly, with only a handful of real players with the size and scale to drive through the big deals," they were already grappling with the gritty reality of performing grunt labor in an environment ruled by despotic senior partners who called innumerable meetings to set unrealistic deadlines and make superhuman demands on anybody within screaming distance. The authors' resulting disappointment and disaffection leaps off every page. Unfortunately, they take out their frustrations with indiscriminate potshots at such easy targets as word processors ("Christopher Street fairies"), copy center personnel ("a platoon of patriotic Puerto Ricans" they offhandedly refer to as "militants") and female research analysts (whom they describe as "under-sexed, eager-to-please"). Long before the hapless authors have stooped to expressing their fury at the bank by such puerile antics as urinating into a beer bottle while seated at a banquet table at the Christmas party, readers will have had enough.

April 1, 2000
Time was when you took a job that you realized was not for you, you made the best of it and moved on. Now, though, you get your bitter revenge by writing a book trashing your former employer and coworkers. Rolfe and Troob worked as associates at investment banking powerhouse Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. It's hard to sympathize with the pair. Their first full-year compensation was about eight times what average college graduates earn at their first job, and they traveled by private jet, stayed in the best hotels, and ate in the best restaurants. On the other hand, they put in 20-hour days, suffered the abuse of "rabid, power-mad bosses," and lacked meaningful personal lives. Relying heavily on "frat-house" humor, they tell the tale of their brief careers. Rolfe and Troob do provide some insight into what investment bankers do, and their story may serve as a warning to others considering entering the field. But if, as they claim, business school graduates are clamoring for such jobs, this warning will fall on deaf ears. ((Reviewed April 1, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)