A former hedge fund executive assistant tells all

Powering nearly every large-scale venture capital firm and hedge fund are the teams of executive assistants who carefully plot out the time of the investors they work with—coordinating their calendars, managing their events, parsing through their pitch decks, and keeping their secrets. It is a tiresome job rarely given much attention or spotlight.

Which is why Private Equity, the memoir of former hedge fund executive assistant Carrie Sun, is making waves for its entertaining and exhaustive detailing of the ins-and-outs of assistant work, and the intense burnout Sun dealt with along the way.

Part of the intrigue of Sun’s memoir is the lingering question over who exactly she is writing about. 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. But Sun is declining to confirm whether such an assumption is accurate. (A Tiger Global spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment)

Sun has a clear reason for this: she says she didn’t set out to write another book on a billionaire hedge fund manager. She had another story she really wanted to tell—her own.

In the broader media discourse, it’s the billionaires who usually get to control the narrative, Sun told me—both their own narrative as well as that of the people around them. “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 said.

Sun does just that—and I found the book rather hard to put down. Private Equity is a riveting, thoughtful memoir delving into questions around the psychological and physical cost of burnout and coming of age in the workplace. The book surfaces deeper questions around what it means to be successful in America—and whether it’s actually worth it.

I sat down with Sun to talk more about the book, and what she thinks of hedge funds these days. (Some portions of this Q&A have been edited or shortened for clarity and/or brevity.)

I know that you hinted at this in your epilogue, but what has life looked like for you now that you've left the hedge fund world?
Sun: I still actually probably work more than I did even during my hedge fund days… I feel more agency and power than I ever did, mostly because I have control over my time.

You talk about this in your book—of being on all the time. It was pretty evident when you describe falling on the treadmill, because you felt like you had to respond to an email immediately after you received it. Could you summarize what exactly your schedule looked like when you were there?
Usually I got into the office between 7:45am and 8:10am. And then I always left after my boss—and he usually left somewhere around 6:30, I think. So it was approximately 11 hours a day physically in the office, but I often worked on the weekends.

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?
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.

Did Boone know this book was coming out?
You know, I haven't talked to him in a long time. I actually have no idea—that is a truthful answer. I have to imagine that he does… But I haven't talked to him or heard from him in a while.

Do you feel like you came out really understanding Boone’s philosophy?
I think I understood it as well as anyone could working with someone that closely for two and a half years, [completing] any task that he needed to get done—both on the work side or even the personal side. What I came to understand most about his philosophy and psychology is really an extreme focus—the most intense focus I've ever seen—on efficiency and productivity and not wasting time.

I would be in the middle of talking, and he would be like: Speak faster, as if I was a slow talker. What are you going to save? Three seconds, maybe? There's just this sense that whatever you were doing, it wasn't fast enough. It wasn't just pace: It is pace without compromising quality. And I mean, first of all, I question if that's possible. I just think that there was a limit to efficiency and productivity, and I feel like his extreme approach is supported by a whole wide staff of people—both at the fund, but also at his family office. And so he's able to have this extreme, to quote Jim Collins—“hedgehog” focus on exactly what he wants to do, because he has outsourced literally everything to other people. I think his philosophy can work for him, and maybe other people who are like him and want to have that approach to success. But I don't think I'm afforded the luxury of being able to work like that, coming from the background that I did and my whole career path.

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.

Do you think that a hedge fund can ever be run the right way? Or is there something inherent about its very structure and purpose that you see an issue with?
In theory, I think hedge funds could both be a general value-add and good addition to the world and society. But I would just say that, in practice, it seems to be really, really difficult. Because at the end of the day, just in terms of legal structure: a hedge fund is a partnership [with investors]. You can take high risk and hopefully get high returns…

I think what I'm trying to show is that a hedge fund can have good intentions, and I think they really did—at least certainly in the time that I was there. But I think, in reality, just the daily work and the pressure of the kind of fast-paced work we were doing—it was so fast, so quick: Every half second was utilized, and the pace of work itself was accelerating. So it was not only fast, but it was faster all the time. I think then it gets to be really hard to take a step back and be in a more reflective mode… If you're just obsessed with returns, and return on time and performance… If that is what you're thinking about all day, every day—it just gets really hard to think about anything else beyond self-interest and money. I think the intention can be there, but it's an afterthought, and it fits into whatever time is left over in the day after you've done your investing, your due diligence.

Do you think that's something specific with the hedge fund model? It was interesting how you compared the dynamic of your time at Fidelity versus in the hedge fund world—specifically because Fidelity runs mutual funds or ETFs that are for retail investors. And you talk about that sense of purpose being different for you and what they're ultimately trying to achieve and who they're investing for. So can you talk about that a little bit?
I joined [Fidelity] initially, because it was where Main Street puts their money in all these retirement accounts, and I thought that they were really helping most of America achieve their financial dreams… It really gave me a strong sense of purpose. But working at a hedge fund, and certainly at the hedge fund I was at, which was one of the most prestigious and top hedge funds, there was no way around the fact that we were helping really rich people or their foundations get richer. And certainly there were still school endowments and pension plans—but really it's a lot of individual LPs that are high-net worth individuals. And there was something deeply, morally problematic for me with that. Because just on a pure financial level—the people who are able to take on higher risk over a long time are the ones who will get even higher returns. So most people don't have access to invest in Carbon, and so they can't get the same access to Carbon’s returns, which vary, but are historically very high.

It was hard to read some of the parts where you're getting emails from your parents or having these really emotional back-and-forth exchanges with them while you're also simultaneously trying to do your job. And I wanted to ask, first, have your parents read the book? And if so, what did they think about it?
My dad hasn't read the book, but he knows what's in it. I told him everything that's in it, and he's really proud of me. My mom—she and I together read the book. And she was like, wow: I had no idea this was going on with you. They would call me at work to try to get me to break up with a boyfriend, but they had no idea how burned out I was, because I was not even registering my burnout at that time. So I was in no position to share with them what I was going through. I was just trying to hold everything together and keep all the balls in the air going. My mom also said: So that's why you gained all that weight during those two years. At first I didn't know whether I wanted to write about that thread. But really it's not about me or my relationship to my body, but rather it's a symbol of the weight of responsibilities we take on in these working environments—where we start with a certain job and then the job just [rises] and increases. And what do you do with that weight of responsibility? I had a solution—it's not a great one. And I was just doing that to kind of numb myself from realizing the complete extreme pressure that I was under.

I tried to combat this via all these individual solutions. I tried meditation, I tried reading [Boone’s] self-help books. His go-to thing was giving me spa days. So I tried all of the massages. I tried everything, and it did not work. I'm not saying that those things are not important. I'm sure they work for many people. But I just think that all these are individual solutions to what I think is a systemic problem of the culture of work itself. I don't think it's enough. And it wasn't enough for me. I hope it'll be enough for others, but you know, I want to question the system of work itself.

Was that how Boone would personally decompress—meditation, reading self-help books, and spa days? Is that what he personally did for himself?
He did that for himself.

And he said it worked for him?
Yeah. It gets into a tricky question of what worked for him doesn't work for me. You know, he has a whole thing: Humility, modesty, understatement, downplaying. It works for him because of his background—his lineage, his pedigree, his resume. It doesn't work for me. I was born in China. I'm an immigrant. I grew up in poverty… His whole model of success does not translate to someone of my background and experiences. He wanted me to be understated. He wanted me to be humble. But I just think—as a woman in the workplace—being humble is a formula for getting passed over. Because how is anyone going to know the work you did if you didn't advocate for yourself… I am a firm believer in advocating for yourself for the work that you did do.

Do I blame him? Well, I can't really, because how he got to where he is, or was—it worked for him. It just wasn't working for me and I think it doesn't work for a lot of people who are not like him.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com