Executive assistant Carrie Sun spent years making her hedge fund boss’ work life run smoothly. Now she’s telling all

There are a few reasons I couldn’t put down Private Equity, the new memoir of former hedge fund executive assistant Carrie Sun that is making waves for its entertaining and exhaustive detailing of the ins-and-outs of assistant work.

For one, there is the lingering question over who exactly she is writing about. Specific names of people and firms in Sun’s book are anonymized, so I can’t know for sure. But if you follow the venture capital and hedge fund worlds closely, it’s hard to miss the common threads between Sun’s boss—referred to as “Boone Prescott,” the founder of elite hedge fund “Carbon,” in the book—and Chase Coleman of Tiger Global.

Sun declines to confirm whether my assumptions are accurate (Tiger Global didn’t respond to my request for comment, either). And it makes sense. By keeping names anonymous in her memoir, she has revolved the narrative around her own story—and no one else’s. “I really wanted to tell a perspective from just an average employee, because I feel that junior employees deserve to have their stories heard as well,” she told me.

I sat down with Sun to talk about her book, which I found to be thought-provoking, and to dig deep into the questions around the psychological and physical cost of burnout. You can read the full interview here. And here’s an excerpt below:

Term Sheet: I was a bit shocked to read how much you were doing specifically to prepare your boss for interviews he was doing on stage—how you were reviewing his slide decks, coming up with questions for meetings. Can you talk a little bit more about that part? And was it difficult not getting much credit for any of those things?

Sun: There's a small detail in the book where I show that he tried to give me credit. Sometimes during the off sites he'd be like: Oh Carrie did this; Carrie did that. But I want credit more than just a shout out. I think I both deserve to be compensated in a way that was reflective of the type of value I was adding to the firm. But if you're going to add these extra responsibilities to my job description, then something else has to be taken off my plate…

[My boss] told me I was an extension of his eyes and ears and brain. I feel like, if I am, let me just say it's exhausting to be that person. And in some ways, it was thrilling, because I really got to understand what it takes to succeed—whether that be [in the form of financial] returns or just having a great reputation. I was very interested in the question: What does it take to make it in America? What is this model of success that people look up to? And certainly the firm—Carbon—when I was there, everybody wanted to work there. It was just very hard to get hired. And it was seen as a very elite place…While it was thrilling, it was completely exhausting. I feel like if I'm an extension of him, I need to be off sometimes. There was just no off.

One sentence near the end of the book really stood out to me. You wrote: “My problem was never with Boone or Carbon but with his kind, and then parentheses: “I thought he was the best of his kind.” Can you expand on what specifically you meant by that?

You know, to this day, I still think he is the best of his kind. Working with him day in and day out, many hours a day…Just to have a complete view on, not just life, but the way he thinks and approaches business. We had a lot of conversations about life philosophy. I really respected a lot of what he was doing.

I think he has built something that people care about, and I think, in many ways, it's both new and exciting. I think their future success remains to be seen, just in terms of returns. In my book, I was there for two and a half years—one of which they were doing really well, and another of which, they were underperforming the market....It was all about optimal performance and doing your best and there was something about that approach that I really respected. And he cared a lot about doing the right thing. And so in my book—I tried to show in scenes and in narrative situations: What does doing the right thing mean? He might think he's doing the right thing, but I feel like I'm underwater and struggling and asking for help, and he's doing the right thing for his business.

See you tomorrow,

Jessica Mathews
Twitter: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
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