Kevin Roose, a reporter for New York magazine, has chronicled a tale of morality and misadventures in his recent book on the young bankers of Wall Street. The non-fiction book “Young Money,” released earlier this month, takes a dive into the gritty, true lives of banking recruits following the 2008 financial crisis — including those from Yale.

Roose follows eight young bankers as they begin their careers at low-level analyst and banking jobs in big firms like Citibank, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs.
In detailing the nature of the hiring at these financial firms, Roose’s work bumps up against financial recruitment at Yale multiple times.

Roose reports on a Goldman Sachs recruitment event for Yale students he attended in the Omni Hotel, in describing how the Occupy Wall Street Movement affected the recruitment process for banking firms. Roose details Yale students nervously attending the talk, where eager recruiters divulged vague and promising details about the glamorous world of finance.

Before leaving, he talks with students about their concerns. A Yale junior named James told Roose he was still looking at a job in finance despite the moral questions now raised by protestors, according to the book.

Elsewhere in the book, Roose also writes about a poignant meeting with Marina Keegan ’12, who spoke about how she was unsettled by the number of her creative peers turning to mechanized jobs in finance. Keegan, like Roose himself, argued against rushing to a job for the security and prestige it may offer.

While the promise of job security in an unstable economic environment seems like a godsend, Roose explains how graduates who end up taking these jobs are often disappointed by the low-level, tedious work. These positions are largely filled with young college graduates — top students with a myriad of talents attracted to the prestige and security of a job in finance.

Yet the jobs fail to deliver, Roose explains. The new recruits end up being tasked with long hours of menial work. Roose details how many of these young bankers give up being writers, doctors, and entrepreneurs after graduating college only to end up pushing numbers through excel programs.

JOYCE GUO