Ex-Goldman Sachs REACTS to 'Industry' (New Investment Banking Series)

get 25 of all financial edge online courses by using the called afsal25 at checkout [Music] for those of you wondering i did lots of internships across investment banks and after graduating i spent over three years working at an investment bank called goldman sachs to most people in the industry goldman sachs is the pinnacle of high finance but to the general public goldman sachs is known as the corrupt government-controlling vampire squid that created took advantage of and got bailed out of the 2008 global financial crisis and before you ask don't worry i'm no longer there that's a bit of background on me now let's get back to the video what is going on youtube welcome back to the channel for those of you that are new here my name is assal hussein and today i'm going to be doing a video that i haven't done before it's a reaction video and the reason for that is there's a new series called industry and it focuses on the journey of a few graduates going into the world of investment banking some of them work on the trading floor some in the investment banking division but what i want to do but what i wanted to do today is watch a few of the clips from episode one which came out a few days ago and just talk to you about what's real what's fake what's glorified what a few things mean so on and so forth so without any further ado let's get straight to it how many of these have you had nine for new york for here and a skype why are you here then well it's not a very political answer but i think mediocrity is too well hidden by parents who hire private tutors oh i am here on my own i want to be able to explain myself clearly um and how people be reset this view is literally the view that you see from goldman's old offices in fleet street because you can see st paul's perfectly aligned can you tell us a joke um yeah no one well i've never experienced it no one asks you can you tell us a joke in an interview it's a bit for work or whatever okay so initial thoughts they've got the interview rooms all of that that's set up everything pretty spot on that's how it feels like when you're going for an interview you get quizzed by sometimes two people sometimes one person the candidates obviously students graduates some are very very nervous some come across too confident but yeah so far interesting they've done a good job on creating that trading floor it looks legit the screens the international clock timers in the red and green in the background the different bloomberg screens or new screens on the tvs it looks looks pretty legit with this year's graduate class please assemble in the second full auditorium that would never happen you don't get like a tannoy all over the firm like there's just no need for a tannoy to announce graduates to go to a meeting um did someone very close to you guys it's a very dark suit i'm sorry for your loss but have you left the uh label on your sleeve there as well wow that's new yeah you look like regional nightclub security it's thank you security actually let me just oh let me just do that for you before you embarrass yourself in front of your peers you see what you've done there is actually erect a billboard to how ghost you are yeah nice one uh robert where's ted baker ladies and gentlemen just so you know wow so you've just seen two douches on the trading floor these people do exist unfortunately but they exist in every industry every career there aren't many of them but these are the type of guys they probably got bullied when they were kids in school so they find it interesting or fun to pick on new graduates the fact that he's picking on the style and suit or color of suit that the graduate is wearing is just low but yeah there are a lot of snobs there are people who you know because they are lots of money they wear designer suits etc etc but nowadays people are a lot more conscious polite nicer but it's not to say that doesn't happen very diverse mix of students which is fair [Music] that looks like the auditorium of many banks they have these big rooms where people go for presentations this is obviously a university lecture theatre but i guess it's the best they could get for this show to congratulate you on this placement the work to stay here starts now which senior vouchers for you the impression that you make on clients we'll all be evaluated in six months time on rift day that's reduction in force you'll be standing in this room telling all of us why you should be hired permanently to your desk that doesn't really happen dear point is the world's preeminent financial services institution we expect you to behave like you have a stake in it act like an owner enrich your clients enrich us enrich yourselves so look at the guy or gal next to you really look do you think you're better than that maybe you are but half of you won't be here in six months just make yourselves indispensable there is some truth in that like as a graduate the truth is look every year more people get hired but to make space for those people lots of people need to get fired and so as a graduate as a junior you want to make yourself indispensable you don't want to give them any reason to fire you because every other graduate or everyone else in that room they're going to be working hard and then you get ranked you're either a top quartile performer mid-tier or bottom quartile performer right and so you want to be at the top people at the top get promoted faster in some cases will get promoted and that also dictates the size of your bonus at the end of the year or at the beginning of the next year extra dirty childhood grabbing drinks coffees etc on the trading floor is more common for an intern or graduate to do partly because most of the traders the salespeople et cetera they glued to their desks and you know it's not like they're being rude it i find it rude to send someone to the shops every single day or to get a coffee whatever it might be but because they're glued to their desk i guess that's their excuse doesn't happen so much in the other areas of the investment bank hey ask rishi for the level of one-year one-year euro swap in 500k db01 rishi today please can you send relax it's not an auction house i've just sent out my runs on your bloom you can sit down this is actually very interesting so her managing director or the person she reports to or the boss of their team basically has asked her for to get price on a financial product let's say and the guy that can get that price for her is sitting opposite her now as a junior you're going to be working with lots of different professionals you're going to be working with lots of different personalities and the better you're able to manage those personalities the better you will perform or do on the trading floor so let's see what happens actually i was talking to felon at femmors he's impressed with that us tail risk work he did for him he sent me an email to say thanks sorry i didn't want to clog your inbox don't apologize just remember to talk your book here people will miss it you want to get your printing business as soon as possible i won't go too deep into all the financial terms but most of what they're talking about is either prices of different financial securities research on how financial markets are doing or a specific sector and so as a junior her responsibility is writing research papers doing research carrying out the right research and finding the right information to create an opinion on whether a stock should be bought or sold or held and then giving that to the various teams or clients and then in due course she will be stepping up and executing trades or being more of a salesperson as opposed to the junior doing all the grunt work sorry just catch my breath cycled in uh yes uh i still don't have your university transcripts how do i knock compliance or hr so he wants her transcripts personally if you've made it through the interview process and you're working at the bank your grades and all of that should go out the window it shouldn't matter for those of you that don't know what compliance do they are basically the police officers of the firm every email you send out they can see who you send it to so you don't get caught sending client confidential or firm confidential information to outside parties they can read all of your instant messenger messages if you get in trouble with compliance chances are you're gonna get fired so yeah and hr obviously they're responsible for onboarding you making sure graduates are having a good experience throughout their onboarding and add new analysts hey have you been home you're just like never in your room and you're wearing an identical outfit yesterday oh well i'm logging those nocturnal hours trying to make a good impression you know he's working long hours to make a good impression don't get it twisted working long hours there's two sides of every coin it might look like you're working long hours and getting lots of work done and being productive but on the other side of the coin if you're working long hours everyone around you might think this guy is struggling he needs to work twice as much as we do so maybe he's not doing so well don't try to figure out how much you get paid by the hour in ibd because i will guarantee you it is less than minimum wage oh you could google search uh investment banking hourly pay and there's an article it's less than mcdonald's hourly pay or something like that because of the hours they work 16 to 20 hours a day especially for the juniors within their first two years five six days a week well i've got this dinner tomorrow night with marlon mercer nicole craig it's a bit of a one-way relationship it's substantial to the firm it's a chance to increase your visibility as a grad do you want to tag along yeah yes i'll look into her mandy don't overthink it i don't think any grads go on client dinners within their first few weeks before you saw the trading floor this is i assume the investment banking division but we're about to find out are you that thirsty oh you know you were 30 quid allowance so this is so true so so this is the investment banking division um so at goldman zeus after 8 pm you get free dinner right and you get a budget so back then it was 15 pounds and you go to the canteen get whatever you want everything expense is paid for and what so many people used to do is get so much unnecessary crap so you'd end up buying like you would get your meal for dinner and then you still have money left so you would spend it on stuff like five six packs of chin gum and just throw it in your drawer so yeah this is funny this is very very true also looking at their desk set up the screens the telephones the keyboards mice everything they've done pretty well it looks legit how's your model go finish it in the morning send it over my way i've got capacity how do you have capacity google finance guy i don't know what that is you're bouncing as you can see there's a competitive complex between harry and gus harry feels the need to take on most of the work and do lots of face time and is always keeping score this further adds to the pressure he feels to perform this is very common as analysts want to impress in order to be taken to meetings for greater exposure hey man hey it's only 10 15. no one here is actually going to tell you this but you need to put in facetime actually i don't staying up on that doesn't know how it's might work facetime is an interesting one you get some people that say do your work and get out the office i don't care about facetime but there are managers there are people more senior than you especially like a lot of people have done the analyst work so they've put in the hard work they've put in the grand now they are where they are so they want others to suffer i hate people like that you shouldn't just sit at desk because you think people expect you to be there being more productive is more important and in the end your work will speak for itself [Music] so trading floor people they're getting a lot earlier 6 a.m 7 00 am and they leave 5 6 7 p.m investment banking division people get in at about 9 00 a.m uh 8 or 9 a.m and then leave midnight 1am 2am [Music] personally when you're in the office alone after everyone's gone home you can actually be more productive and it feels good to just be focused rather than being interrupted every five minutes by someone asking you a question or having to answer the phone so there's it's nice to it's that library quiet late night study environment obviously he's taking some pills to keep him focused it's important to note that while some people take drugs to focus you shouldn't do this whatever the cost it'll only make things worse over the long run if you're in a role where you feel like you need to take drugs to enhance productivity then you should evaluate the cost to your well-being man sleeping in the toilet never done that before i don't know anyone that's done that i'm sure maybe one or two people have whether it's in law banking i don't know don't know if this happens or not i don't think it does what he should do is get a cab home after 10 pm you get free cab home get a cab home go home sleep and then come back in the morning or come back in a few hours that's not a good idea [Music] 3 a.m another night [Music] what's that that's my model why are you doing the moment gus is doing them i had capacity i just want to get ahead all right i told you do the pitch books you [ __ ] pitch [ __ ] okay hunger folks want to optimize delivery speed so looking at mid caps with best in class gps tech clear comps deliver room ubereats i found something with good setting of ip they're quite small stick to the formatting jesus say make sure the fox helvetica 12 or the md will freak i might have to take one of you into the pitch i'll leave but it'll be good for your visibility first of all the actors are doing good with the financial jargon secondly she is clearly on their case she seems a bit of a tough senior to please they're working on either excel or powerpoint on excel they're building valuation models to assess the true value of a company or the future value of a company before they go to a meeting and pitch it or pitch why it's doing well or not so well or why they should take it over so on and so forth harry's working on the powerpoint presentation the model all of that needs to be presented accordingly so you use a powerpoint presentation he just needs to pay attention to the detail in the presentation get all the right fonts text sizes logos graphs etc and make sure it's tip-top by the way if you're wondering why is everyone eating at their desk this is normal everyone eats at their desk regardless of the division people don't take an hour out for lunch maybe once maybe fridays maybe if they're meeting up with someone but generally you go to the canteen or go to the local shops restaurants grab food bring it back to your desk eat on your desk read something on the news maybe just do some more work or watch a video but the culture is everyone eats at their desk don't let daria tell you it's just dinner i'll work on a [ __ ] yeah it's never just dinner it's never just a coffee with people in banking it's always they need to think of the next like how they're going to get business out of this person where is this one meeting going to lead how are they going to use that meeting to get another meeting or get introduced to someone else they're constantly thinking about next result next point getting revenue or money for the business [Laughter] i can't lie once i went to a client breakfast it was me a colleague and the client i feel like i'm this graduate in the scene basically they were talking about cricket rugby and golf man grew up playing football in the cages so couldn't really relate so it's a bit awkward well if that's your philosophy you could trade it extremely reasonable that's twice the price i'm i'm being sarcastic it is reassuringly expensive buy an option on the us tenure at four percent yields haven't been there since before you were born actually since the early arts were you even sent you sorry nicole graduates don't normally pitch wow this annoying me if it's a meritocracy regardless of how senior or junior you are if you have an idea you should be able and allowed to pitch it right you're not just going to dinner to sit silently clearly this vp or director whoever she is doesn't like that and you see this so often like a lot of juniors do a lot more work than their seniors but they have to wait their years to get promoted speed and clarity gus has a model i'll be done telling comments by tonight we need to get the book to the printers by 6 a.m don't stay up at night but tell me that's doable uh don't stay up all night but tell me that's doable we need to get the books to the printers by 6 a.m so every presentation book that these guys are working on it needs to be printed ahead of the client meeting and at most investment banks at goldman's anyway they had a production office or place downstairs where people work 24 7 printing these presentations binding them and all of that so if you say you need 50 copies by 7am or 5am on this date they would work around you to make sure it's all printed that printing office is there for the whole organization all the different divisions so if there's a long queue you might not be able to get your work ready for 5 or 6 am that's why it's always good to give them notice but this is going to be a long night for these guys the lady that's telling them what to do she's got people she's managing up so her managing director and people she's managing down these two graduates and she needs to get these books ready for the meeting and she is putting a lot of pressure on them but this is the nature of working in the investment banking division it's intense there's short time spans to get things done and a lot of work to do in [Music] most of the time when you're working late you're literally doing this type of stuff you're working on powerpoint presentations aligning things correcting fonts making them look nice making it all be consistent he's basically gonna work on this presentation when it's perfect he's gonna send it for print and then hopefully it will be well and it will be ready for 6am the next morning the fonts are different he's in trouble you're in the meeting with me well done but you're not listening to me it's just one page i [ __ ] up the font on that one page can you just reprint it no company got one you're probably watching this thinking why is he stressing so badly it's just a front he feels that because of this mistake his job's at risk he might get fired the people more senior to him they might look at the error in the fonts it's not it's not a big deal but they might look at a client might pick up in the meeting and then it might just look bad for the organization attention to detail that's why it's very important analytical skill is very important and so he's stressing it happens to everyone every single junior employee will have one of those events i remember actually once the new analyst on the team there was a meeting coming up and he forgot the page numbers i've made mistakes it happens but the best way to deal with it try and catch it before it happens when it happens raise it to your senior tell them this happened and try and fix it if you're senior as a good person they'll say don't worry about it we'll fix it well it's not big deal the worst thing you want to do is hold it in and not tell anyone because then it will come and bite you in the backside later on oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ] [Music] so harry has passed away this takes me back to when i interned so 2013 the year that i interned one of our fellow interns who was working at bank of america merrill lynch he was working in the investment banking division if i recall correctly two or three days working straight no sleep and then they found him dead in his uh flat or apartment in east london exhausted overworking um will never know the true story truth is and it's really sad guy passed away obviously and everyone just gets on with their work it's like nothing happened obviously to his graduate class it's a big thing but everyone else around them is just getting on like nothing happened which is a tragedy in its own right taping the nose room isn't it impossible to compete with this girl's narrative i mean everything's aligned for her you know nothing about her well i know she went to a [ __ ] uni and i know she's black and i know those things mutually exclusive sure but together tick tick you are [ __ ] vile come on it's just realistic believe it or not there are people sad people like that in this world in every industry extremely competitive look down on people from different backgrounds racist and you know what it's part of life you have to put up with those people those people end up not getting far anyway so hello nicole hi it's harper from pierpoint that after an idea we talked about let's go for it in half a yard half a yard so a yard is a billion so half a yard is 500 million can you price that option idea we talked about half yard do i just say done alfie i've done four cents half yard done four cents let's see where this takes us do not forget how this feels right now you are a world killer now i see you i think a lot of people in this industry work to get to those moments where they feel in control pumped up it's like when you go out and play a great game of football or a sport that you love you feel pumped there's adrenaline you're in flow and so that moment there was her in her flow on the trading floor and so although every moment in their working life isn't like that it's you know you work to get to that height and then it comes down and then you work for the next high so i think that's kind of what most people seek in all their careers but that's an example of it on the trading floor now that you've seen the reactions i wanted to share a few thoughts with you so firstly you have to take these type of series with a pinch of salt they're made to get views they're made to get reviews ratings etc some of what you see can be glorified and it's always good to not just believe everything you see on tv so that's the first point having said this they do a decent job in capturing what it's like to work at an investment bank and the graduate experience so they positioned the investment banking division fair they did that well they did the trading floor pretty good the small details like the different characters the work-life balance the small details on the trading floor the desks the messiness of the desks the general environment and how it feels to be an investment bank they kind of got that pretty spot on but once again they definitely dialed up a few of the personas of the characters so you do get douchey individuals mean individuals but that's at every organization but they use that to kind of paint that picture yeah it exists but it's not as common as you would imagine the drugs were fairly exaggerated and i personally thought they put too much of it in the show it kind of ruined it a bit um i worked in the asset management division at goldman sachs so the work-life balance is better than the trading floor and the investment banking division i'm sure there is drug usage in investment banks and in the industry when you're working so many long hours when you're in a stressful environment like the trading floor god knows what people get up to right but personally in asset management my time there a lot of people have families the work-life balance is better people want to get out the office go see their kids that wasn't my experience of working at goldman's in asset management but you know if you're on the trading floor in investment banking division who knows it might be quite different but once again take it with a pinch of salt because all of this can be fairly exaggerated because it's a tv drama at the end of the day the death of harry isn't a joke if you feel like you're being overworked or you don't have a very healthy work-life balance or you're feeling stressed like talk to someone whether it's a fellow analyst or associate or an employee colleague whoever it might be or if you feel like you can't talk to someone at work talk to someone outside of work because the last thing you want to do is drive yourself to the ground work isn't that deep all of these organizations they will replace you at the click of a button so don't put your life at risk just to get a few presentations printed and all of that once the intern died in 2013 they started getting a bit more serious they protected weekends for investment banking division employees they closed off friday evenings from work so you had to leave the office at 9 pm they put these rules in place but truth is people still work past those because when you've got deals and stuff to work on you know you're focused on doing the best for the client getting that deal executed and you're thinking about your bonus at the end of the year or beginning of the next year so if you do feel pressured or you feel like it's getting too much talk to someone rather than you know putting yourself and your health at risk for a soulless corporate machine and that probably doesn't really care about you and last but not least i think the directors did a decent job in the diversity of the five graduates investment banks are getting more and more diverse now that means diversity of race gender sexuality economic or social economic status it's fairly reflective you do get a decent mix at investment banks on the trading floor asset management investment banking division mixes are getting better so diversity is on the up which is good so yeah i think that was quite refreshing to see if you enjoyed this video do consider giving it a thumbs up if you haven't already subscribe to the channel and let me know in the comments below if you want me to do another reaction video to episode two thank you

Channel: Afzal Hussein

Views: 310,011

Rating: 4.9006252 out of 5

Keywords: Students, student, uk, university, entrepreneur, internship, intern, insight week, goldman sachs, jp morgan, investment banking, investment, banking, finance, careers, corporate ladder, interviews, interview, linkedin, youtube, London, how much do investment bankers earn, investment banking pay, investment banking salary, investment banking bonuses, investment banking internship, a day in the life, bonuses and salaries, money, industry, industryhbo, afzal hussein, industry bbc, industry series

Id: lbKbv2X7W-U

Length: 27min 22sec (1642 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/lace_and_leather]

I watched the whole review it was very well constructed with timestamps in the description. I really appreciate that he talked about his own experience of feeling like an outsider.

[u/throwaway-shamed-7]

This was good, but when I clicked it it skipped to 16 minutes in