Insider Today: Zuck’s wild transformation

What did you get up to last weekend? Here in New York, I was trying to cool down by escaping the city to go lake swimming with my family.

But for a select group of young Wall Streeters, there was no such respite. These wannabe masters of the universe were up all night participating in high-pressure job interviews with private-equity firms offering $300,000 compensation packages.

The annual private-equity recruitment drive sees the most junior bankers, or analysts in Wall Street parlance, interview for their next job while still in the very earliest stages of training for their current job. 

This year, the process started earlier than ever, with investment banking analysts just weeks into their careers in finance stepping out of training sessions at firms like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan to prep for interviews with the likes of Apollo, KKR, and TPG. 

It’s a striking reminder of the war for talent in finance, even in a quieter environment for dealmaking. Blackstone recently became the first private-equity firm with $1 trillion in assets under management, while PE firms still have more than $3 trillion in capital to put to work, according to Bain & Company. 

Sparking a conversation: Insider’s Aki Ito recently won the Nell Minow Award for Cultural Criticism at the National Press Club Awards. In a reported essay back in March 2022, Aki wrote that “many employees have quietly decided to take it easy at work rather than quit.” Her story inspired a TikTok that went viral, helping spark the national conversation on quiet quitting.

He’s got a six-pack, a blue belt in Brazilian jiujitsu, and wants to fight Elon Musk in a cage match. He also demonstrated a calculated coldness when he laid off tens of thousands of employees in the past year, and showed no mercy when launching Threads at Twitter’s weakest moment. 

What happened to the gentle, cocky tech wunderkind who launched Facebook from his dorm room? According to people who have been close to Zuckerberg over the years, the CEO’s transformation is a survival response to the most turbulent period in his company’s 20-year history.

Read the full story.

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What started as a pandemic-era park meetup has turned into a sprawling events empire. At the helm is Andrew Yeung. By day, he’s a Google product lead. By night, he throws tech’s hottest parties.

Over the past three years, Yeung has thrown nearly 200 events, attended by more than 15,000 people. His guests include filmmakers, supermodels, political consultants, blockchain entrepreneurs, and founders of all kinds. Yet, because of visa restrictions, he’s never seen a dime from his parties.

Meet tech’s enigmatic party host.

Mergers and acquisitions may be down, but hiring on Wall Street is still hot — if you know where to look. Whether it’s investment banks or hedge funds or private-equity shops, the financial industry is always on the lookout for top talent.

Insider has compiled a searchable list of more than 350 Wall Street recruiters, including headhunters who place traders, dealmakers, portfolio managers, and bankers.

Take the next step in your job search.

Also read:

Most jail cells don't have five bedrooms, four fireplaces, an au pair’s quarters, and sweeping views of San Francisco. And most prisoners don't get permission to spend seven leisurely days out with their children when they're in town.

But until the former technology CEO Michael Lynch is tried over allegations that he had a role in a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme, his posh Pacific Heights house is his cage.

He's the latest to benefit from an interpretation of federal law that lets rich defendants be their own jailers — spending millions to turn their luxury homes into jails with 24/7 guards.

Inside home prisons for the 0.1%.

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— Brandon Southern, a former senior leader at Amazon, on how you can actually get promoted.

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