Mom? Dad? I'm Home!

Jeremy Andrus figured he was destined to join the business elite when he accepted a spot at Harvard Business School in the fall of 2000. He set foot on the fabled campus during the greatest wealth-creation boom in history, when there was a sense that the Jeremy Andruses of the world didn't just control the future, they owned it. By those standards, Andrus would have been courted like an NBA lottery pick by graduation--with earnings potential to match.

Little did Andrus know that by the time he graduated in June, he would be launching his career in an altered MBA job market so dismal that even Harvard's cachet wouldn't be enough to land him the real estate venture-capital job he wanted. Instead, the resigned 30-year-old packed his bags and, for the first time in his life, stepped backwards, moving to the ski-bum paradise of Park City, Utah, to live with his parents. "I never thought I would move back home," says Andrus, "but that's what it came to."