Book Review: Finance Whore

The title of Fatima Gholem’s fictionalized account of her time in the finance field, Finance Whore: What is Your Price? lets you know, right out of the gate, that this is not going to be a calm, reasoned account. The book is an indictment of the rancid working conditions in the industry, but also a harsh exercise in self-criticism. Her autobiographical main character, Hannah, is the whore, as she sees it, in a business that turns almost everyone it employs into a whore of some kind.

The book was inspired by Gholem’s first couple of years of work. It’s set during the 2007-2008 financial crisis, which provides an ominous context for the setting. Hannah doesn’t name her employer, or even the European city where’s she working, for obvious reasons. The place is a luxurious hellhole.

Hannah is working in the operational side of the hedge fund business, something I didn’t know much about, and honestly had never thought about before. It’s detailed work, with serious penalties for errors. For example, if you miscalculate the value of an asset, that can result in regulatory trouble or a client lawsuit. Hannah has to check and recheck her work, constantly stressing out about making a mistake. (And, as someone who writes about process automation, I kept wondering why all the workflows were so manual…)

There’s a lot of checking and rechecking. Every 12-hour day is packed with detail overload. The office environment is toxic, with a manager who seems to be conducting an exhaustive master class on how to be a bad boss. He’s such a manipulative control freak, he won’t let Hannah go to the dentist for a painful cavity. She ends up losing a tooth due to his selfishness and (probably illegal) restrictions on her time. As Hannah grows more exhausted and stressed out, he won’t let her take time off that she’s earned, either.

The office is full of creepy corporate climbers. They run the gamut from porn-joking “bros” to scheming, flirting women who show cleavage to get the bad manager’s attention and favoritism. It’s a male-dominated culture, and Hannah goes into squirming detail on just how disgusting and unfair the whole setup is for women in the office. There’s the terrible balancing act of being feminine versus being a cold bitch. Men get to have all the good ideas. Women with graduate degrees are supposed to listen adoringly and look pretty. You feel like punching these jerks in the face.

To let off steam, Hannah starts to drink a little too much. However, if I had to contend with men who nickname their dicks “The NASDAQ,” which is typical for her social life, I’d probably hit the bottle, too. The book’s descriptions of the partying excesses of her cohort of overpaid, over-stressed, and money-obsessed peers are depressing, even if they trigger some guilty voyeuristic thrills. She exposes a truly ugly side to it all, too, with drugs and sexual assaults affecting some of her close friends.

Still, as you read the book, you start to think, why does Hannah call herself a whore? She is simply experiencing through what almost everyone goes through at the start of a career in a demanding field. A medical resident, a first-year law firm associate, a production assistant in Hollywood—to name a few of many career paths with brutal entry phases—would require a similar grind.

There is a reason, however. As she gets further into the work, Hannah feels she is betraying her values. She had envisioned the job as a way to get experience and make money so she could move on to starting her own business or non-profit. A year into it, she realizes this is not happening. She’s miserable. Her health is getting worse. She’s drinking in a problematic way. The money she thought she would save is evaporating into high costs of living. She’s on a treadmill she can’t stand, but isn’t sure how to get off.

As the story progresses, you start to get a sense of how the “ethics” of this industry are affecting someone who has a strong sense of right and wrong. She’s asked to forge a signature on a document. She refuses, because she knows it’s illegal, but her colleague, the one with the arsenal of push up bras and flexible morals, has no qualms about doing such things. She’s the one who will get ahead at the firm, and after a while, Hannah realizes maybe that’s fine with her.

Hannah also reveals, as the story unfolds, some trauma earlier in her life that has made her less than interested in being part of the toxic team dynamics at the office. She’s given many opportunities to be “one of the guys,” so to speak, but it’s not who she truly is. Every time she verges onto behavior like that, she feels herself become more of a finance whore.

Gholem writes well. It’s an engrossing read, full or rich detail and raw emotions. The book is a tad long, but it’s engaging enough to keep you reading along. I definitely recommend it for anyone who is contemplating a high pressure career.

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