Internship From Hell: Goldman Sachs New York Securities Division (now "Global Markets Division")

okay yes okay so this is a story I have told so many times and I kind of don't want to tell it anymore um because every time I do I relive the trauma that was this experience but I feel like it's important for it's like I feel like I should tell this story in the same way that like a survivor of something traumatic needs to tell that story of that experience for the sake of all the other survivors and for the sake of everyone who didn't survive um I mean I don't want to make it sound like I like trivializing actually serious traumatic historical occurrences but I do believe this is a it okay anyway I'm just going to stop talking about how traumatic it wasn't just to tell you the story this is the story of my summer internship in New York at Goldman Sachs in the summer of 2016 first of all things might have changed already because this was four years ago and I'm not sure how they do their internships anymore but I hope that if I share this story it's like helpful and enlightening to any college students right now who are like who think they might want to work in finance or Investment Banking or just want to share my experience and you can you can take it as a warning or not and or you can just like plow straight ahead anyway just gonna just gonna dive right in so this internships I was in the Securities Division so I'm innocent investment banks have like three major arms I would say there's like Investment Banking sales and trading which does like stock market stuff and then investment management which is like investing people's money on their behalf so I was in the stock market sales and trading at Goldman it was called securities this was just New York I can't speak to the experiences in like other offices just New York just the Securities Division Anonymous and making a not investor management there were 200 interns 200 interns in the New York office alone in securities alone and I think it was like 200 junior interns meaning we had just finished our junior year in college and then another 50 sophomore interns who had just finished their sophomore year in college and we're already interning at Goldman Sachs so yeah 250 interns it was a 10-week long internship and the way it was structured there's one week of orientation and then there's three weeks there's like three rotations of three weeks each so one week three weeks three weeks three weeks which makes 10 weeks total the first week of orientation was like a kind of a crash course in financial like vocabulary and knowledge but at the same time you have to scramble and fight for these next three rotations that you are about to have because they're not predetermined for you like HR did not assign our rotations we had to fight for them because the whole the whole summer felt like a huge experiment slash bootcamp slash interview to like see who could come out on top and who was most competitive and most cut through so the first week is like partially educational but at the same time you have to run across the river so we were receiving our educational training in the New Jersey office I believe if I remember correctly and then every day after that ended at like 3 p.m. we had to like run across the river to the Manhattan office at like 200 West Street in the financial district I think we had to network with these the the people that we wanted to rotate with so big picture the Securities Division in New York at that time had about like a hundred teams of like 7 to 12 people each and out of these 100 teams about 60 teams were participating in the internship program which meant they were hiring like a new employee like the reason they participate in the internship program is to find someone they want to hire to join their team at the end of the internship so the other teams that didn't participate didn't need any like new people they didn't need to hire people so 60 teams are participating 60 teams by the way who are only hiring like one person each and then there are like 250 entrants so do the math a lot of people aren't gonna make it um so we had to like email these people like email the analysts on the team and then like run across the river and like have a coffee chat with these people which was corporate lingo for an interview basically like a casual interview you interview them about like their job and you try to learn more because you're like this fresh college student yours like still in college and you don't know jack-shit about financial terms and products and like how the actual financial system works so you have to ask them about their job and try to understand the team and decide if you want to work on that team and then they're interviewing you to see if they want you to intern on they're not only like not just like do they want to hire you do they even want you to intern or do they want like nothing to do with you so this whole interview process is like going on every day after our training so after that one week like Friday evening we all of our all of us interns ranked the top 12 teams that we wanted to rotate on for our first rotation this is like not even for the other the next two rotations this is just for your first rotation so you rank the top twelve teams that you want it's like the team that you hit it off best with or that you find most interesting or that you think will rank you because you're ranking them and then all of the teams are also ranking interns that they met and like that they want to rotate on their team so it was like this whole like gambling like you have to work the system and play the game right and like rank them correctly and you have to give them enough to be like oh by the way you were my top choice and they're like oh okay then we'll put you as our top choice to to like increase the chances of us being paired Monday no Sunday evening we like got our pairings and a lot of people didn't get their first choice because there were like some teams that were very popular that everyone wanted to join you get these pairings and then you start your first rotation and then immediately like during your first week of your first rotation you have to start networking for your second rotation so you have to start emailing all the analysts and then like associates and VP's just like work your way up the ranks so the way it worked in investment bank or at least at Goldman at that time was like analyst associate vice-president managing director partner I think that's how it was and they like in between managing director and partner sometimes there's like executive director I think I think that was it so you're like an analyst for three years then you're an associate for like two or three years and then you're a VP for like forever I think VP was like the most common title in the company because it's like the most middle level it's like middle management and then a few people make it to managing director MD and then like very very very few people make it to partner yeah you had to network with the analysts and associates and VPS maybe mostly analysts and associates and so you start your first week on your rotation you have a bunch of work to do for the team you have a bunch of learning to do because you don't know jack-shit about finance you have a project like presentation that you have to present at the end of your three week rotation that you need to work on outside of your regular work hours when you're like busy networking with everyone and trying to learn stuff from your team and at the same time you have to like fight with people for your next rotation so then three weeks go by and you have to rank 12 teams again and all the teams have to rank interns again - like for the next pairing and matching so then you start your second rotation and the first week of your second rotation you're like busy learning about your new team you're maintaining net like maintaining good relations with your previous team because all the people who didn't get your previous team so like if other people rank to your previous team but they didn't get chosen because cuz you got chosen they're gonna try to network with that team anyway and be like oh is there other any projects that can help out with any data that I can help you crunch like just to kind of show their initiative and be a good team player and participate and try to get a job offer basically and so you have to like fight all those people and you have to maintain a good relationship with your old team you have to make maintain a good relationship with your current second team do the project that you have to do and present for your second team and you have to network for your last team because you still have a third rotation that hasn't been decided yet that everyone is still fighting and scrambling for so that's really fun you have all these side projects going on have all this networking with your first team with your next team with your current team you have like a bunch of new knowledge to learn for your current team and then there's the third rotation where everyone is scrambling because it's the end of the summer it's the end of the internship people either have like verbal non official offers already from teams who liked them or they didn't have offers and we're like freaking out and so the intensity of the cutthroat competitiveness just skyrocketed in the third rotation those last three weeks and everyone was networking with all these teams they're going like behind each other's backs there was so much backstabbing where like if you had a good rapport with a particular team other people would be like yo I want to work on that team like I don't want Emily to get it so they would go and try to do projects for that team try to have coffee chats with the people on that team it was just so exhausting and oh and the best part was all of the interns had to wear a nametag every single day for the entire summer it was like it was like wearing like a big like Elle on your face it said your name and the college you came from or the college you are a student at so like anyone got a nametag on was an intern and it was just like a clear and easy way to identify us also a lot of the times we didn't have a part like a proper desk on the trading floor so sales and trading like the this division that I was in is like the stock market division so whatever you've seen on television like the wolf of Wall Street um that's like pretty accurate they're just like this big sprawling like huge room with like rows and rows and rows of desks and computers and people just like don't have cubicles you like sit next to a bunch of people and as interns we didn't even get a desk among those rows and rows and rows of desks we just got a stool like a plastic stool not even like a wooden stool like a plastic stool where we could like sit behind people and like shadow them and like talk to them while they're working at their computer and learn about their work and then pick up our stool and go to the next person that we want to shadow in like plop down behind them on our little stool and like shadow them so that was great nametags the stool also because of like the workload these projects that you have to present at the end of your notation but during the day you're like busy having coffee chats and busy helping your team with other data or Excel spreadsheet things or whatever they need your help with that's not your final project that you're presenting on you end up working on your project after work hours so everyone leaves maybe at like 6 or 7 or 8 p.m. and then you stay until like 9:30 or 10:00 to work on your project and because you're the intern you have to show your willingness and hard work and initiative and you have to come to the office before anyone else does literally I'm not kidding so I came to the office at this like still hurts me to this day I came at 5:40 in the morning I arrived at the office before the Sun came up and this was summer so summer is when the days of the longest summer is when the Sun rises the earliest and I arrived at the office before the Sun came up yes it was it glamorous glamorous time in my life um I remember sometimes I came to the office and like the lights weren't even on yet but usually they were on because other interns had already beat me to the office because that's how competitive it was I would like come to the office of like 5:40 in the morning and then I would leave at like 9:30 p.m. and I like literally did not see the Sun I did not see the Sun and I took taxis like to and from work because at that point you're just like I don't want to bother taking the subway I'm exhausted I just want to go to my bed and I think there were times when I had to choose when I had to choose between showering and getting an extra like 30 minutes of sleep and then usually I chose to get more sleep because I was chronically sleep-deprived yeah the whole internship was just like gross like everybody was gross nobody had time to like sleep or shower everyone was like stressed and like gained a lot of weight and like stressed ate I was like stress eating all the time it was great great times every person you come into canto that was another thing I forgot to tell you every single person the reason we wear name tags is because every single person you come into contact with can like write notes to HR about you and like HR was like tallying all these points so we all had like ongoing like point accumulation and every person you interacted with even if you like stood in line at the cafeteria to like buy your lunch and you talked with someone or if you had like one of those coffee chats with someone and they ended up not liking you they could like write to HR about it and like HR would like dock points there was just like this ongoing point system and that's why we all had nametag so that people could like identify us and write HR about us so just the whole system of like every single person you come into contact with is like basically interviewing you and passing judgment on you and I need to fight all these other interns um and there's like limited spots and you have to do all these presentation projects but then you have to network and maintain good relations and like backstab people and fight people so anyway by the end of the summer I did not want to work at the company at all and I probably would not have gone back to the company if I had gotten a full-time offer from the New York office but the way things ended up working out was the last team that I was on in New York in my internship was the hedge fund consulting team within the larger hedge fund team called prime brokerage but like me being the overly ambitious intern that I was I reached out to the hedge fund consulting team in all of our branch offices so like hedge fund Consulting London hedge fund consulting San Francisco hedge fund consulting Hong Kong I actually connected really well with the Hong Kong team the guy that I spoke to he actually was in charge of choosing the interns that rotated on their team during that summer in Hong Kong and he was like you know we haven't found any interns that we like here in Hong Kong yet our team in New York the team that you're on right now they have said very good things about you and you know it turns out like cuz we had a phone conversation he was like you know I had no idea you speak Mandarin and like you have family in China and you know would you be interested in coming to work in Hong Kong full-time like if we gave you an offer in Hong Kong would you take it and I was like um like at that point I had I was so disillusioned with the whole summer in the whole process and this whole company in industry I was like super jaded and I was like you know I can interview with you guys and just we'll just like we'll just we'll see so this is like the last week of my internship the last week out of ten weeks I was so exhausted and just like filled we like resentment and hatred towards the whole internship process and I had these back-to-back interviews with the Hong Kong team and because of the time difference between Hong Kong and New York I came in to the office and had like an interview at like 6:30 a.m. New York time and then another interview at like 7:00 from 7:00 to 7:30 a.m. New York time and then another interview from like 7:30 to 8:00 and then I started my regular work day in the New York office and then at the end of the work day I had more back-to-back interviews with the Hong Kong team like from like 9:00 to 9:30 p.m. and then 9:30 to 10:00 p.m. and 10:00 to 10:30 p.m. and so I interviewed with like I think ten people total from the Hong Kong team from like the analyst position all the way up to like partner at that one I was so just disillusioned and tired of the whole interview process this holes that whole summer was just what a 10-week interview he was like a 10-week 10-week bootcamp slash 10-week interview and I was so done with everything and so when I interviewed with the Hong Kong team I straight up asked those people like I straight-up asked a bunch of managing directors and even the partner I was like what do you find most meaningful about your job because all the people that I had spoken to that summer everyone was just like I don't know like it pays a lot of money or like I really like working with smart people the people in the Hong Kong office said something similar like everyone like nobody could come up with a decent answer for how their job is meaningful and a lot of them just said they enjoy working with the people they work with and it's like I didn't ask you if you like the people you work with I asked you how you find your job meaningful and like beneficial to the world there was actually one managing director who straight up was like I do my job I'm here for financial motives and anyone who says otherwise is lying to you and themselves like fair okay cool like that was honest thank you but also that sucks and like good luck with your life I think the partner of the Hong Kong team like gave like a somewhat satisfactory answer he was like I enjoy helping people he's like I enjoy helping our clients because a lot of the clients didn't like the hedge fund like the hedge fund team at Goldman just like helps a lot of startups like hedge fund startups and he's like I enjoy helping them get their business started just like cool like okay there but if you think like deep like if you think about it really hard all these hedge fund people who are starting hedge funds are billionaires like millionaires or billionaires who have made a lot of money already from working in the finance industry and want to make even more money by starting their own hedge fund so we are helping billionaires who want to become ultra billionaires yes isn't that lovely so if you really think about it how meaningful is that how much are we benefiting the world how beneficial is that to the world for us to help rich people get richer yes so anyway I did all that interviewing and I was very jaded and like didn't want to accept the job offer that I knew was gonna come so I was pretty sure that I was gonna get a call so the way it worked was the internship ended and then we all kind of like went home finally and just waited like two weeks to a month for a phone call about the results whether or not we got a job offer I kind of knew I was going to get the offer from Hong Kong and I was like debating if I wanted to accept it or not um but in the end I decided to accept it for a number of reasons and they feel like I might make a separate video about this but one of the reasons was they were going to give me I think was ten thousand dollars to move to Hong Kong so they were going to pay for my move to Hong Kong and like they would sponsor my visa and like sort out like all the immigration stuff that I need to do to get to Hong Kong and I was like that's a sweet deal that's like that's really tight because I can quit anytime after I get to Hong Kong which is what I did I quit sooner than I expected I was gonna stay for two years and then quit but I quit after six months yes that is a different story it was also a very traumatic experience oh my god why is everything related to Goldman so [ __ ] traumatic like the internship was traumatic working in working for them full-time was traumatic quitting like the process of quitting was traumatic anyway um so they gave me ten grand to move Tong Kong and that was like for like the flight and like any shipping costs for like boxes of like my stuff / like getting myself settled and like the first apartment and everything since I hadn't got my first paycheck yet so that was like one kind of major reason why I eventually accepted the job because who doesn't want to receive a bunch of money to move to Asia and like have someone sponsor your visa and yeah um and then another reason I accepted actually yet we need to talk about this now another reason I accepted the job offer after a lot of internal struggle and debate and kind of like this huge existential question of like do I want to be a sellout do I want to sell out to the capitalist machine that is Goldman Sachs / the entire financial industry um and the reason I sold out was because of fear yes our best friend um I was afraid I was afraid of being a failure because I feel like this is a much deeper topic that I should just make another video about but just like coming from an immigrant like a Chinese immigrant family um making a lot of money and working at a famous company is like those like the two things the only two things that you have to do in your life - like to be a good kid to be good in like responsible to your parents to be a success to be not considered a failure - just two things just two things just make a lot of money and for a famous company sounds really easy um so there was that and then I was afraid of what people would think like if I didn't work at a famous company or make a lot of money this is what I used to care what people would think about me yes um and I was afraid of going back into the like job hunting market in recruiting again for consulting companies or other banks or other companies I didn't want to go through rounds and rounds of interviews again um and so this was just like me taking the lazy way out and just being like I'm gonna take this job offer and I'm gonna take 10 grand and move to Hong Kong and start a new life there and then quit whenever I want and that actually is what I did it wasn't as smooth as I just made it sound but yes um ultimately I accepted the job offer out of fear and laziness and for the opportunity to move to Hong Kong yes I feel like this video has gone on for way too long and I'm gonna have to cut cut out a lot of it um but yeah felis those my internship from hell my story of my internship from hell yes and I have lived to tell the tale I remember at the time there were a lot of Chinese international students at Wellesley my college and they were all curious about my experience in China and in China at the internship in New York and so because so many questions came at me from Chinese international students I actually wrote a whole document in Chinese about my internship and whenever anyone asked me like over like text message I was just like send them I just like send them the document and be like oh here read this be like Oh tell me about your internship experience I'd be like here read this cuz I was just so done and tired of telling the story but I felt like I should tell this story for the sake of people who are thinking about going into this world going into the world of finance it is not a pleasant world and I do not recommend it so I wanted to share this story yes and also to document it for myself because this was a life experience of mine a traumatic one but but an experience nonetheless and I hope I never have to talk about it again because if anyone literally in the future if anyone asks me about that internship again I will just send them this video okay bye bye oh and I'm so glad I survived it and I'm so glad I never have to go through that ever again ever again you

Channel: EMERLENE

Views: 526,263

Rating: 4.6042104 out of 5

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Id: Y5udNrlkanc

Length: 26min 34sec (1594 seconds)

Published: Wed May 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/onestrats]

Her videos are quite insightful. If they built Gus's character a lot more along this storyline to the point when he left would've been super

[u/verossiraptors]

Pretty interesting video! A lot of it resonates with the experience from Industry. Not surprising, since the creators of the show both come from the finance world!

[u/valiant1337]

Read quite a few reviews labelling the series as unrealistic, glad to see someone's real lived experience showing how Industry wasn't far off the mark.

Her review of Industry is coming out soon apparently.