Monkey Business

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Personal reaction: I thought this book was really funny because of the way it took an idiom, created a sentence to put it into, and then had an illustration depicting the literal meaning of the sentence. The illustrations were what really helped the story get its meaning. What is the one thing that you think you will do differently or think differently about since you read the book?

Loaded with wit and snark, great characters, and lots of hot, steamy, naughty sex, Playing Dirty is sure to satisfy.”—New York Times bestselling author J. KennerWhat is a specific real world application that you will be able to make from what you learned in this book? De un tiempo a esta parte me ha dado por los libros de inversiones, bancos y delitos monetarios en general. Quizá sea porque una vez yo estuve a punto de entrar en el negocio de las opciones y futuros, aunque finalmente me quedé como estoy, pobre pero haciendo física. From the long hours and the constant mistreatment, it's easy to see how investment banks precipitated the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. During the peak of investment banking, 2003-06, bankers were so desensitized that they had no idea how to think or build value for the economy. Everything was about money, everything was about selling and sounding good and not truly working on behalf of their clients. While most of these shenanigans happened in the trading side of I-banks and not the banking side, the same culture permeated throughout, the almighty dollar before EVERYTHING else. 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. 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.)

The 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. Parker writes intense storylines that anyone can relate to. Her characters are complex, with long and sometimes turbulent pasts that they have overcome, that still continues to affect their present. . . . I cannot wait to see where she takes this new series.”—Fresh Fiction 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. If you have the choice, please travel light and leave your buggy or scooter at home. There will be no cloakroom facilities and all buggies and scooters must be left at the buggy park by the entrance.

Wordle Helper

El libro es entretenido, y el lector se siente muy identificado con los protagonistas. No está mal escrito y acaba uno creyendo al menos que sabe más sobre el funcionamiento de los bancos de inversión. Al principio del libro hay una cita que me encantó (y que pongo porque se le puede aplicar a CPI, aunque, obviamente, estemos en desacuerdo con ella): From C. L. Parker comes the start of an irresistible new series in which competition is the ultimate seduction. The finance world has changed since the writing of this but a lot of the behaviours persist. I hope that it was changed for the better but I am not holding my breath. As a result, despite the jocular tone of the memoirs, I am not sure I would call this book funny - brutal and a little depressing, especially in hindsight. 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."