A former right hand to billionaire hedge fund manager Chase Coleman was lavished with perks such as a Balenciaga tote bag, a $2,500 gift card to SoulCycle and surfing trips to Montauk — but the stress of the job forced her to quit, according to her memoir.
Carrie Sun, author of “Private Equity,” changed the names of the people involved for purposes of her book, but The New York Times reported that she was an employee at Tiger Global, the Midtown Manhattan-based hedge fund with an estimated $58 billion in assets under management.
Tiger Global, which made a fortune on early bets on companies such as Meta and Spotify, lost billions in 2022 as the technology sector was hit with a serious economic downturn.
In her memoir, Sun, an MIT graduate who completed her studies in three years, described her experiences as an executive assistant to Coleman, who founded Tiger Global when he was just 24 years old and has since amassed a net worth valued by Forbes at $5.7 billion.
Sun, who did not specify when she worked at the firm, wrote that she once found a $200 unopened bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label whiskey in the trash. Her excerpts were cited by Business Insider.
Sun also claimed that she once found a $1,000 birthday cake made especially for the boss that was thrown in the trash without anyone having cut a piece for themselves.
According to Sun, Coleman was often too busy to eat the specially prepared meal made by his personal chef, which would include soba with miso dressing and grilled steak. The chef would often beg Sun not to throw the meal away, according to book excerpts.
Sun wrote that she was initially enthralled with the office culture at Tiger Global, which encouraged its employees to constantly “strive.”
“I just thought the office was quite literally out of this world,” Sun told the Time to Say Goodbye podcast. “I joke to myself that the light made everyone just seem like they walked out of a Barney’s catalog and they were Nobel Prize winners.”
Sun said that employees at Tiger Global “were just the smartest and most, sorry, beautiful people on Earth” who “just kind of glided from meeting to meeting while like just owning the world.
“I was surrounded by people who strove and didn’t think striving was a bad thing they really were so focused on being excellent.”
While she described Coleman as “kind,” she was weighed down by his meticulous nature and attention to detail as well as his refusal to lighten her workload.
“He cares about every tiny detail,” Sun said. “And so there was no room to make, you know, any mistakes which would be costly.”
When she asked Coleman to hire a part-time assistant to help with tasks such as filing expense reports, the boss pushed back, telling her: “I was burnt out for 10 years or more. If I can do it, you can, too.”
Sun wrote that the demands of the job eroded her work-life balance and that the eight women who worked as assistants — none of whom had children — “were trying to survive in a gendered office that prized the ability to put work above everything else.”
Assistants were also warned by company higher-ups against gossiping “as cover for fear of what would happen if we came together and talked.”
Sun, who was seriously injured while trying to answer an email while on a moving treadmill, wrote that the long hours were doing damage to her health. She recalled one evening where she gorged on cookies.
Eventually, she developed an eating disorder. Sun wrote that she told her therapist the job was “killing her.”
On Christmas, Sun was given gifts that included a $2,500 gift card to SoulCycle, a large Balenciaga tote bag and a winter coat from Derek Lam that retails for $6,000.
According to Sun, co-workers would gift each other expensive items such as engraved Tiffany key chains, a $500 gift card to Bergdorf, bluetooth speakers and high-end headphones from Beats by Dre.
Tiger Global employees are even allowed access to a company gym, which is stocked with Nike and Lululemon workout apparel in all sizes.
The showers in the women’s locker room offer up shampoos and conditioners that are sold in the luxury goods section at Barney’s, according to Sun’s memoir.
The firm’s “family day” includes renting out Central Park’s Victorian Gardens amusement park.
According to Sun, Coleman has employees book celebrities such as former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick and a member of the New York Rangers hockey team to come speak to the firm to mark his birthday.
Sun wrote that Tiger Global was able to book same-day reservations at Nobu, the high-end Japanese restaurant where diners often have trouble booking a table.
The Post has sought comment from Tiger Global.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
