Andrew Yang was groomed for a high-paying job at an elite law firm. He lasted five months. [View all]

NEW YORK - Andrew Yang's office phone rang at 6 p.m. on a Friday.

He reached for it, then stopped. The staffing coordinator at his New York law firm was calling. If he answered, he knew, he'd be at his desk all weekend editing some dull stack of documents.

It was fall of 1999, and Yang, 24, was in the job he had steered toward his whole life. Phillips Exeter Academy, Brown University, Columbia Law - the perfect elite track to land at Davis Polk & Wardwell, one of the country's premier law firms. His Taiwanese immigrant parents were thrilled. Counting salary and bonus, he was making about $150,000 a year.

But now he looked at the phone, and the nagging whisper in his head was suddenly a screaming alarm: He was in the wrong job. He wanted to be the person creating businesses and deals, not the person writing the contracts.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Andrew-Yang-was-groomed-for-a-high-paying-job-at-14568039.php