What was most striking to me in the first two chapters of Liquidated was the emphasis on "smartness" and hard work. The author's narrative and accounts on the working conditions and expectations of Wall Street, as well as, the aggressive recruiting process by these firms, makes it hard not to feel like Wall Street is not exploiting its lower level workers. What was interesting about the idea of smartness is that, while it was claimed by the recruiters to be the number one reason for hiring, in practice being able to do long hours of grunt work for low pay was more important. To me, it seemed as if the firms were using the prestige of their companies, combined with the prestige of the universities they were recruiting from to manipulate the attitudes of prestigious students to believe that a job on Wall Street was the best outcome they could make for themselves. All of this has a lot to do with cultural perceptions of upward mobility, gaining prestige and wealth, and capitalistic attitudes.
The system seems to be based around creating and maintaining a public perception of elitism and prestige. It certainly makes one wonder what the motivations for the recruitment process entail. On the one hand, recruitment from Ivy League Schools, particularly Princeton and Harvard, ensures that new employees will undoubtedly be quality but not qualified. In fact having previous knowledge or skill in finances is largely unimportant to the firms discussed by Ho. This makes one wonder if the companies are really just recruiting for the "name-brand students" in order to legitimize their companies and banking upon the prestige of their organizations to booster students interest in them.
Rob, you point to a crucial aspect that Ho is trying to highlight: the tension between the claims to "smartness" and the reality of hard work on Wall Street. Also, you're right to note that there is a process of a vicious circle of maintaining the image of excellence through the name branding of employees' educationational background. It makes you think about how education institutions too play a role in establishing, reproducing certain forms of elitism. One thing to think about is also how the educational institutions' brand is in turn reinforced by showing that they placed X number of students in Y Wall Street firms.
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