They probably arent that good but since they make connections they move up. Kinda sad when you think about it. Instead of having really good skills that you don't have to play the game and can work wherever.
@ 10:50 1. every business is a hierarchy, its called networking, thats the fundamental way to make the most money and in general make your job both streamlined yet still challenging, to maintain a flow state(enjoyable) you can enjoy a job all you want but if it doesn't meet your financial expectations then it'll be less appealing, everyone wants to make more money, no. matter. what. 2. this is the exact reason why biological women almost never go into STEM fields, the need for social interaction while working is almost negligible, because most STEM is about do your job and go home, men like social interaction too, we just realize the money is worth it because we can socialize outside of work, not to mention a lot of work is still local(from home) currently so it would have been the same for you either way. 3. if you had any doubts coming into the role, your lack of confidence prescribed your self-fulfilling prophecy, those weren't friends, they were competition and they finessed you out of work..
My advice to anybody who wants to work in tech is to always go to a company whose core product is tech. Avoid finance companies because you will be a second class citizen there.
@@lavenderscent2334 Finance companies aren't "bad" per se. It's just that their priorities are elsewhere. They see tech dept as a cost centre. In a pure tech company, tech dept is the revenue generator so we get all the attention.
Hierachy has its place but only when the people above you have been proven capable and are there to educate you and keep you sharp, not look down on you.
@Divyanth Jayaraj That's exactly what any upstanding person believes and what society wants you to believe. I used to believe it, I was capitalist and meritocratic to the core. But with a little experience in corporate America these ideals quickly prove to be delusions. Bosses (in large corporations) are psychopaths, many are imbeciles. Most of them, except maybe at the very top, aren't visionaries at all but politicians. There is no meritocracy in most very big corporations. I'm talking about corporations the size that are exchanged on the stock market. I recommend going through Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs.
I did a software engineering internship at Barclays Investment Bank in NYC. Good money. Good perks. Loved living in the East Village. But at the end of the day, the rockstars in IB are the folks upstairs (hint: the ones with MBAs). Decided to go to a place where engineers are the rockstars. Made all the difference.
i was invited to a Barclays front office hiring dinner.... omg the M&A guys are just so obnoxious, the only lady I liked, seems like someone I would enjoy working with is from research. And the Other front office guys treated her with so little respect, mid dinner I ordered wine and had some fun chat with people from other courses and left.... 😁😁😁
I get the feeling the sales and IB interns were only treated so well because the company wants to entice them into coming back full time to work 80-100 hours for no extra pay. I work at a Big 4 which isn't as prestigious, but follows a similar style of hiring thousands of interns, lavishing them with expensive dinners and events, before throwing them on the wheel until they quit.
Exactly what I’m thinking. I heard someone who works at Goldman Sachs say that the majority of her friends who worked in IB ended up changing to another field after a year or so. Don’t know how it’s such a sought after position among students
@@Retral It's a prestige thing. A lot of people go in with the plan of jumping ship. They just want the name on their resume to make finding better jobs easier. Plus, working that many hours means you'll be gaining a ton of exposure and learning a lot in a short amount of time.
Having done 2 years of banking, it's basically because banks mostly make money from finance groups. On the flip side, at a lot of tech firms, especially startups, finance functions are considered second class citizens because the main function of the company will revolve around engineering.
The hours aren’t usually 80-100 hours. However when you are expected to be able to work that long. The hours get progressively less, when you rank up (IB is pretty much a video game where you try to level up). However since you are literally making more money than you know what to do with. Most people just save, and quit lol. IB is good for someone willing to work insane hours and make a lot of money. I’m a workaholic, so without working 70-100 hours. I feel incomplete
May I ask you if you would consider making use of PySpark instead of learning Scala for data scientists starting with Apache Spark? I don't know (or didn't listen well enough..) in what year you started doing your internship, but do you think Scala is still the preferred language for Spark?
Wow that is the best compliment that I’ve ever received 🙈❤️ haha for reals tho my hair has been like this since I was a kid and I’ve given up on taming it 😅
thank you for sharing Tina! Indeed finding a culture that fits you at a company is a suuuuper important aspect you don't really think about until you either find a really bad match or a really great one :) (boo to hierarchy!)
Thank you so much for this informative video! I thought it would be just another vague recap of an internship, but I really liked how you covered all the different aspects of your time there, including your work. This is very beneficial! Thanks a million
Only halfway and this is a great video! You explained everything simply which shows your depth of understanding and provided your unique insight. Thank you!
Great video Tina, thanks for sharing! I agree with several others in the comment section that hierarchy + prestige can be a source of positive and negative energy. Sounds like high school all over again. Thanks for the insights!
Honestly im so glad youtube recommended me this UA-cam channel, i think im getting so much knowledge just by watching your videos since im about to apply for internship aswell. Hope it goes well
For anyone young the company will alway treat you better the closer you are to the revenue. It’s the same at other companies Marketing and Sales get treated better than IT or HR. And the closer you are to the revenue the more perks you get. Say you are in HR but support Sales then you will prob get invited to the Convention .
I came into finance as my first job after my MA in International Affairs. I haven’t had these exact experiences. But it is definitely interesting to watch this now considering what happened in the news with GS
Your project sounds fascinating. As someone with a finance background, the hierarchy exists at every firm and totally sucks. That took real strength of character to say no to the top investment bank. Well done! Totally sharing this with a former investment banker friend, he'll probably say you were the most awesome person in that building at the time. Best of luck!
I think the trade off to not being invited to a bunch of events is actually liking your team and work! The prestige and hierarchy is a lot more prevalent for the investment bankers and sales and traders. Although you get treated more importantly, you probably also hate your life a lot more.
LOL ‘treated more importantly and also hate your life more’ this is the sentiment that I’ve gotten from all the IB and S&T people I’ve met haha. Very true! I think it did probably bother me quite a lot because it also somewhat gets internalized and when you work with these other functions they just kinda look down on you. Does that make sense? Just the overall structure of the company is a bit depressing IMO
@@TinaHuang1 Yeah it's to compensate their resentment towards the work hours and lifestyle hahaha. Sadly though, this hierarchy/toxic culture is pretty common across all investment banks. The closer to the revenue you are, the more arrogant unfortunately - speaking from experience from observing my colleagues as an IB intern in the past.
Thanks Tina. Really interesting to hear how you had a similar experience. I definitely learned alot about myself as well whilst meeting some cool people. The prestige really deaded the vibe at GS, no matter how many times they said the words "flat structure" and "meritocracy". From a fellow Summer 2019 GS London intern.
HI FELLOW INTERN!! Haha omg you guys too 😂 I can’t count how many times they said flat structure, meritocracy, restructuring by discipline so that everybody sits together etc etc. to their credit they are trying to change eg. dress code changes too! But it definitely will take time since it’s so ingrained in the culture....
Thanks for the insight! It's good to be prepared for that hierarchy, and also good to know that there are people like you who know they won't thrive in that environment and have the courage to leave. It is not that way everywhere, and the "well that's the way it is" mentality does not help anyone. Congrats on your clear head and good luck with your career.
You signed uo for a Corpo. Luckily I used to work as a waiter in these corpo events while studying and I got to see these hierarchies. After graduation I avoided Corpos like the plague.
Great explanation, Tina! Really enjoyed the video! Organizational hierarchies span industries and sectors. I only have experience in the public sector, so I can't speak to the nuances of other's, but the concepts are pretty much the same. If you're in a business unit, then the people that directly contribute to whatever the work of that business unit is are typically going to be catered to more. Anything else is a support role and not central to that business unit. Those support roles could be business centric in other business units and their dynamics are vastly different than in the support functions.
I’m so glad you liked it! And that’s a great explanation and makes a ton of sense. There really needs to be a conscious action for the company to prevent it from happening I think
I interned in GSAM and I swear everything you said was a mirror image to my own experience. Only difference was my manager ripped me half way into the internship and straight up told me that I’m not good enough to work for GS 🤷♂️
Yooo wtf...I’m so sorry man that sucks. Well I guess you can think of it as a blessing in disguise. If they’re gonna treat people that way when you’re just an intern imagine how they treat their employees 😭
@@TinaHuang1 Yeah she told me and I quote "maybe sometime in the future you might be good enough, but right now you are definitely not GS material". She told me that in one of the MD offices that was overlooking the trading floor and I couldn't even speak. I held back tears and I went down to that river past the Conrad hotel near the ferry, and sat on a bench and cried my eyes out the rest of the day. I was broke. My dreams crashed right in front of me. Btw I came from a non-target school so front office internships like that at GS were not a thing. I networked my way to get that role. That's the only way I got it. Honestly, I don't have a youtube public channel or anything like you do, but everything you brought up was SOO true and I really wish I had a platform for some of the things I saw that summer. I never got the return offer but I would like to shed some light on the situation because there is so much shit that goes on there that people don't see on the inside.
I'm sorry if this sounds like an opportunity for self-promotion, but I would really love the chance to maybe make a video on your channel with you and just discuss our experience there because, from the people I spoke with, I feel like some students need to hear what really happens when you the full-time offer there. If that isn't something you are interested in, I totally get it but I don't have a channel or anything so I don't have anything to gain. I would just like a platform to tell people about my experience and what it's really like to work front office at GS. If not, I totally understand :) after all, I am just some random guy commenting on your video lol. Either way, love this video, you def have a new sub!
I love it when geniuses talk about getting FAANG(ish) jobs like its a walk in the park and not liking them. I hope someday I get good enough to have options like these.
I interned at Goldman Sachs (London) years ago. I remember at some point during the first week, they brought out sandwiches etc for the interns to have for lunch and network. But when the tech interns tried to have some, the HR people (or HCM as they like to call themselves) got very aggressive to us. Turns out, the food was just for the Securities (trading) interns and we had to leave and walk down the street and buy our own lunches. There is definitely a hierarchy. As a software engineer, you will have the best experience at a company that is tech or prioritises tech. I also recently found out about the pay differences of software engineers at investment banks vs tech firms and I feel like I have been living under a rock this whole time. I have worked at other investment banks, but now pivoting into actual tech.
"I assume that it's the people that care about prestige that do. Again, not gonna lie, back then I cared a lot more about prestige because I was a lot more insecure about my abilities and didn't really know what to do with my life. So prestige was a way to prove to myself and others that I was doing well." You aptly put into words something I, and a lot of other people, are facing but can't seem to realise completely (or maybe don't want to). Thank you for being honest with us, being transparent and mindful about yourself like that is not only difficult but requires humility. I don't doubt that some people in Goldman really love the work that they do and don't mind the hierarchy, but you've confidently said it's fine to say no to a prestigious job simply because you think it's not for you. I could never pull myself to do that because I care too much about reputation and prestige. I should be myself and live my life for myself, not for others. Your confidence and mindfulness is infectious and acted as a push for me. Confidence is not the guarantee of your ability but your willingness to try. I will dare to fail from now on and take it easy. Thank you very much Tina!
I was also in the new analyst tech program at GS. Good memories. I only stayed for two years before leaving. The hierarchy is real - it never goes away.
When you go in a top tier place this is what happens. Like getting into Harvard & later finding out you are not the smartest among your classmates feels shitty.
When you were learning Scala for a week and figuring out everything you need to pull that Data, did they say anything to you while you were just learning? I’m assuming they want you to be doing actual work and learning on your own time? Did they get mad or dissatisfied that you had to learn stuff they expect you to know?
Great question! No they were really nice about it and they already knew that I didn’t know since I never listed it on my resume. I took my time and they were totally cool with it :) I really did like my team a lot 😊
It reminds me people care more about what you do for a living and your position in society no matter how much money you have (even if it was enough to retire or something)
I had an internship at a political consulting firm. The way the CEO spoke to interns or the unorganized behavior was enough for me. So now I’m here, graduating in May will a Poli Sci degree me confused as ever
Your internship sounds very similar to actuarial work. I study actuarial science and we use a lot similar lingo like unsupervised model, seasonality, data extracting/ wrangling etc.
Well Goldman Sachs is a bank. You should've seen it coming. Engineers don't make money for the bank. If you had interned at Tesla, the engineers there, the R and D ones would be the most prestigious people.
Everyone wants to be appreciated. If you come in and people that are on your level...that start at the same time you do...and aren't any better than you get promoted or special treatment, it's not fair. In a work environment, your status should depend on your merits. Feeling unappreciated is terrible and clearly that was their culture from the beginning. You took a more mature/accurate stance by decided not to work there than your peers likely did. Good job. Also, it sounds like you realized that women are super social relative to men in general, so you were able to take your needs into account which is amazing. Most people are just enslaved by their job and suffer.
I had a similar experience in regards to finding out I wanted to work in a team environment with a little more human interaction. I always worked by myself and didn’t talk to anyone else unless it was a fellow intern or my boss checking in on me.
Hi Tina, really some interesting perspectives on how it's like to work with the big guys. Super frustrating with the hierachy. On the other side would i be supriced, if i heard they had a flat structere. Looking back, would you have chosen Amazon if you knew how the intern would have been?
That’s a great question. I think I would have still chosen Goldman Sachs tbh because the work is more aligned with what I want to do ie. data science. Also I feel like I would have always wondered what it would be like to work in finance haha. It also makes me appreciate my current work environment so much more too now 😂
@@emreken7315 we did emre. The point was that you can't be crying for the structure if you are interning. Finance is notorious for strict hierarchy and having a tech job in finance sector will most probably zone you out. It is similar to having a finance job in a tech company, you wouldn't get the same respect as your tech peers there.
@@emreken7315 no i turned it off pretty quickly once i realised how stupid she was workplaces = heirarchy, anyone who doesn't understand that going in is at the bottom and yes they even exist among people at the same "level", anyone who doesn't understand THAT is being promoted last or never
There’s two sides to the prestige thing. Personally I don’t give a crap about prestige, i get paid I do job I go home and pet my dog, but it does bring other opportunities and resources, thus it’s not crazy to say that prestige itself is also a type of resources. However with the workload and complexity most engineering teams have, I don’t think many engineers would like to spend time on that based on the workload . It does get very annoying when them finance kids show it off when some of us literally don’t care, but it’s also a great way for us to get into other potential roles and departments if one day you like to
Sounds like this place my sister worked at called Money Matters. The hierarchy and disparity in pay among minorities working there, made her feel just like you did with all the 'prestige'. The way she and other minorities working were treated was total discrimination and she couldn't do anything about it.
Thanks for sharing, Tina. It seems you're in a much better place now, which is great. :D However, this was entirely unsurprising unfortunately. Scrolled through the comments a bit and it seems I'm not the only one to say this. Thankfully I didn't experience it firsthand, but this is everything I heard and read myself when I was looking into getting an MBA and researching post-MBA careers.
Community Teamworks is the "give back to the community" initiative. You would have be required to perform an activity such as cleaning someplace, painting.
Hard to swallow truth: if you go into a Finance firm as a scientist, you’re going to be the Asian guy in the Jenga scene in the movie “The Big Short.” Racism? Yes but also stereotyping and - more truthfully, this is your basic job, which is to support the Sales and Trading people to help them make their multi-million dollar bonuses. You’re not here to do data science. You’re here to be trotted out so that other people can make the big bonuses, you’re not the star. You can be a scientist, you can be Asian, and you can go into finance, but if you want prestige, you have to go on the sales and trading and you have to bring the full-on aggression, raw greed, naked opportunism, and questionable morality, that’s needed to earn the prestige in this field. Reality: ua-cam.com/video/3hG4X5iTK8M/v-deo.html
The problem that rich people careless about being human to other because of money they end up look people as things they can just buy. So your choice was outstanding.
It is a well known fact that in finance there is a lot of hierarchy and clicks. I would say never pick finance over tech with the exception of tier one Quant firms. You will anyways make more money on average in tech and way more when normalised for time.
Any tips on finding smaller quant firms to do internships at? The big ones like Goldman, etc. are just so competitive. I would love to try my hand at the field and I feel like some smaller firms would be better to explore. But idk how to find the names of these places lol
I see nothing wrong with hierarchies in competitive environments. It encourages people to do more and serve the company better. IBD and sales are more prestigious because they make gs more money than the other divisions. Only bad thing about a hierarchy is that I'm not at the top of it
I don't honestly understand what attracts employees to companies that perform so poorly that they need injections of tax payer money to survive. It's doesn't make sense.
Thats exactly why Jamie Dimon said the Banks should be scared shitless about Fintech. The whole hierachy is upside down and I don´t see how big banks will be able to attract and retain talent in tech even though that´s what they need the most. Trading on the other hand seems to be full of superstition and overconfidence. Looking at charts with a human brain is completely meaningless when you have to go up against complex mathematical models and high frequency trading like the Millenium Fund where the founder is a mathematician, not a business major. Quants are the obvious exception but I am pretty sure most interns at Goldman Sachs have very limited knowledge about Quantitative Finance.
Sounds like the recruiter trying to tell me Goldman Sachs is a technology based company is trying to bs me... I'm probably not going to leave Cap One then
I was one of the committee members of the economics society in my university. We once invited Goldman to hold a networking event... hell no, I'd never work there.
Investment banks with toxic work culture? Say it ain't so! Work there sucks so much that most analysts leave after 1-2 years. They even worked an intern to death once.
Great video! Thank you for sharing your experience. I was wondering what year of undergrad did you acquire this internship? Also did you secure any internships the summer after your freshman year?
What great insight! Thanks for the video, I subscribed about half way through :) Question though, is "strats" essentially the same thing as "quants" at other banks, hedge funds or firms?
So glad you enjoyed it! Yup - it’s very similar. The only nuance is that some quants trade and strats generally don’t. That’s just my understanding though! Haha I may be wrong
Hie Tina how were the working hours? did you work the same hours as the front office who work for around 16 hours per day? I have a finance background and starting my masters in data science and I am researching about the various industries i can work in.
High school never ends ... the cliques just evolve
TRUTH
They probably arent that good but since they make connections they move up. Kinda sad when you think about it. Instead of having really good skills that you don't have to play the game and can work wherever.
@ 10:50
1. every business is a hierarchy, its called networking, thats the fundamental way to make the most money and in general make your job both streamlined yet still challenging, to maintain a flow state(enjoyable) you can enjoy a job all you want but if it doesn't meet your financial expectations then it'll be less appealing, everyone wants to make more money, no. matter. what.
2. this is the exact reason why biological women almost never go into STEM fields, the need for social interaction while working is almost negligible, because most STEM is about do your job and go home, men like social interaction too, we just realize the money is worth it because we can socialize outside of work, not to mention a lot of work is still local(from home) currently so it would have been the same for you either way.
3. if you had any doubts coming into the role, your lack of confidence prescribed your self-fulfilling prophecy, those weren't friends, they were competition and they finessed you out of work..
My advice to anybody who wants to work in tech is to always go to a company whose core product is tech. Avoid finance companies because you will be a second class citizen there.
Yup lol I learned this the hard way
Interesting, hadn’t thought of it that way !
Unless you’re a “front office engineer” at a quant trading firm.
Why is finance bad lol (i'm newbie fyi)
@@lavenderscent2334 Finance companies aren't "bad" per se. It's just that their priorities are elsewhere. They see tech dept as a cost centre. In a pure tech company, tech dept is the revenue generator so we get all the attention.
Hierachy has its place but only when the people above you have been proven capable and are there to educate you and keep you sharp, not look down on you.
Very very true!
That’s true!
Very rare it seems to find hierarchies like that. When you finally do, you understand the value.
@@ClayMastah344 Yeah I agree with everyone here but the reality is different; read or skim David Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs if you've got some time.
@Divyanth Jayaraj That's exactly what any upstanding person believes and what society wants you to believe. I used to believe it, I was capitalist and meritocratic to the core. But with a little experience in corporate America these ideals quickly prove to be delusions. Bosses (in large corporations) are psychopaths, many are imbeciles. Most of them, except maybe at the very top, aren't visionaries at all but politicians. There is no meritocracy in most very big corporations. I'm talking about corporations the size that are exchanged on the stock market.
I recommend going through Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs.
I did a software engineering internship at Barclays Investment Bank in NYC. Good money. Good perks. Loved living in the East Village. But at the end of the day, the rockstars in IB are the folks upstairs (hint: the ones with MBAs). Decided to go to a place where engineers are the rockstars. Made all the difference.
Can totally relate! Yeah it really does make a huge difference - a lot of it is quite covert too.
Is an MBAreally that important in IB? a good % of Goldman Sachs lifers who are now managing directors don't have it.
I would've thought MBA isn't necessarily a prerequisite to get into Investment Banking though?
i was invited to a Barclays front office hiring dinner.... omg the M&A guys are just so obnoxious, the only lady I liked, seems like someone I would enjoy working with is from research. And the Other front office guys treated her with so little respect, mid dinner I ordered wine and had some fun chat with people from other courses and left.... 😁😁😁
I'm also experiencing similar frustration. What kind of places did you look/how did you look for companies where engineers are the rockstars? lol
I get the feeling the sales and IB interns were only treated so well because the company wants to entice them into coming back full time to work 80-100 hours for no extra pay. I work at a Big 4 which isn't as prestigious, but follows a similar style of hiring thousands of interns, lavishing them with expensive dinners and events, before throwing them on the wheel until they quit.
Yup I think that was exactly it!
Exactly what I’m thinking. I heard someone who works at Goldman Sachs say that the majority of her friends who worked in IB ended up changing to another field after a year or so. Don’t know how it’s such a sought after position among students
@@Retral It's a prestige thing. A lot of people go in with the plan of jumping ship. They just want the name on their resume to make finding better jobs easier. Plus, working that many hours means you'll be gaining a ton of exposure and learning a lot in a short amount of time.
Having done 2 years of banking, it's basically because banks mostly make money from finance groups. On the flip side, at a lot of tech firms, especially startups, finance functions are considered second class citizens because the main function of the company will revolve around engineering.
The hours aren’t usually 80-100 hours. However when you are expected to be able to work that long. The hours get progressively less, when you rank up (IB is pretty much a video game where you try to level up).
However since you are literally making more money than you know what to do with. Most people just save, and quit lol.
IB is good for someone willing to work insane hours and make a lot of money. I’m a workaholic, so without working 70-100 hours. I feel incomplete
Solid video. Honest, no BS, straight to the point. Thanks for sharing! Have subbed :D
Yay I’m so glad you like it ❤️❤️
Man lyk afzal uno
@@HqComphelpqH Cmon
AYE AFZAL
Really cool to hear about your experience! I know you were just lured by the "fancy food"
obvs
Oh! I watch your videos
@@iffyschannel :)
@ken jee was here 😋
May I ask you if you would consider making use of PySpark instead of learning Scala for data scientists starting with Apache Spark? I don't know (or didn't listen well enough..) in what year you started doing your internship, but do you think Scala is still the preferred language for Spark?
Respect for chasing your passion instead of the prestige
drive.google.com/folderview?id=1YP_-yqhS3_exi6Kfo8Gq82qIyMlJy6_V
@@mauvehawaii nope it is BOTH prestige and passion, a win win for her as she managed to land a data science job, not some finance job
i cant stop staring at your hair. its like chaotically healthy,
Wow that is the best compliment that I’ve ever received 🙈❤️ haha for reals tho my hair has been like this since I was a kid and I’ve given up on taming it 😅
thank you for sharing Tina! Indeed finding a culture that fits you at a company is a suuuuper important aspect you don't really think about until you either find a really bad match or a really great one :) (boo to hierarchy!)
Yesss!! Haha it’s something that I think people don’t really think about that much (me included) but it matters so much after you actually get in
I had to do anomaly detection for a POC and liked the isolation forest method too! I’m glad you decided on a management consulting path 😄 👏
were the generation of "screw this job"
amen brother
😂 Love that
Thank you so much for this informative video! I thought it would be just another vague recap of an internship, but I really liked how you covered all the different aspects of your time there, including your work. This is very beneficial! Thanks a million
Only halfway and this is a great video! You explained everything simply which shows your depth of understanding and provided your unique insight. Thank you!
Great video Tina, thanks for sharing! I agree with several others in the comment section that hierarchy + prestige can be a source of positive and negative energy. Sounds like high school all over again. Thanks for the insights!
Yay it's Data Professor!! Yeah it really is haha and I definitely don't do well in that kind of environment 😅
Honestly im so glad youtube recommended me this UA-cam channel, i think im getting so much knowledge just by watching your videos since im about to apply for internship aswell. Hope it goes well
For anyone young the company will alway treat you better the closer you are to the revenue. It’s the same at other companies Marketing and Sales get treated better than IT or HR. And the closer you are to the revenue the more perks you get. Say you are in HR but support Sales then you will prob get invited to the Convention .
I came into finance as my first job after my MA in International Affairs. I haven’t had these exact experiences. But it is definitely interesting to watch this now considering what happened in the news with GS
this is really refreshing to hear tbh. thanks for sharing!
Hey Tina, congrats on 10K! 🥳
Thank you Data Professor ❤️❤️
8:36 dang that sound really caught me off guard, Nice video btw.
I bet this took f'ing forever to edit. ~10-12 hours?
Great video :)
I’m so glad you liked it because spot on! Haha I’m seriously considering hiring an editor to help me with some of it so pls hmu if you know anyone 😭😭
@@TinaHuang1 Lmao, I'll let you know. I need one too though 😂
@@TinaHuang1 I might know someone... Let me know if you're still looking, so I make an intro :)
@@TinaHuang1 Byron is a free lance editor he also has a youtube channel
Your project sounds fascinating. As someone with a finance background, the hierarchy exists at every firm and totally sucks. That took real strength of character to say no to the top investment bank. Well done! Totally sharing this with a former investment banker friend, he'll probably say you were the most awesome person in that building at the time. Best of luck!
I think the trade off to not being invited to a bunch of events is actually liking your team and work! The prestige and hierarchy is a lot more prevalent for the investment bankers and sales and traders. Although you get treated more importantly, you probably also hate your life a lot more.
LOL ‘treated more importantly and also hate your life more’ this is the sentiment that I’ve gotten from all the IB and S&T people I’ve met haha. Very true! I think it did probably bother me quite a lot because it also somewhat gets internalized and when you work with these other functions they just kinda look down on you. Does that make sense? Just the overall structure of the company is a bit depressing IMO
@@TinaHuang1 Yeah it's to compensate their resentment towards the work hours and lifestyle hahaha. Sadly though, this hierarchy/toxic culture is pretty common across all investment banks. The closer to the revenue you are, the more arrogant unfortunately - speaking from experience from observing my colleagues as an IB intern in the past.
Ahh yeah I’m not surprised at all :(
Thanks Tina. Really interesting to hear how you had a similar experience. I definitely learned alot about myself as well whilst meeting some cool people. The prestige really deaded the vibe at GS, no matter how many times they said the words "flat structure" and "meritocracy". From a fellow Summer 2019 GS London intern.
HI FELLOW INTERN!! Haha omg you guys too 😂 I can’t count how many times they said flat structure, meritocracy, restructuring by discipline so that everybody sits together etc etc. to their credit they are trying to change eg. dress code changes too! But it definitely will take time since it’s so ingrained in the culture....
Thanks for the insight! It's good to be prepared for that hierarchy, and also good to know that there are people like you who know they won't thrive in that environment and have the courage to leave. It is not that way everywhere, and the "well that's the way it is" mentality does not help anyone. Congrats on your clear head and good luck with your career.
Yes, it's insightful. Thank you for sharing this with us!
drive.google.com/folderview?id=1YP_-yqhS3_exi6Kfo8Gq82qIyMlJy6_V
You signed uo for a Corpo. Luckily I used to work as a waiter in these corpo events while studying and I got to see these hierarchies. After graduation I avoided Corpos like the plague.
Great explanation, Tina! Really enjoyed the video!
Organizational hierarchies span industries and sectors. I only have experience in the public sector, so I can't speak to the nuances of other's, but the concepts are pretty much the same. If you're in a business unit, then the people that directly contribute to whatever the work of that business unit is are typically going to be catered to more. Anything else is a support role and not central to that business unit. Those support roles could be business centric in other business units and their dynamics are vastly different than in the support functions.
I’m so glad you liked it! And that’s a great explanation and makes a ton of sense. There really needs to be a conscious action for the company to prevent it from happening I think
I interned in GSAM and I swear everything you said was a mirror image to my own experience. Only difference was my manager ripped me half way into the internship and straight up told me that I’m not good enough to work for GS 🤷♂️
Yooo wtf...I’m so sorry man that sucks. Well I guess you can think of it as a blessing in disguise. If they’re gonna treat people that way when you’re just an intern imagine how they treat their employees 😭
@@TinaHuang1 Yeah she told me and I quote "maybe sometime in the future you might be good enough, but right now you are definitely not GS material". She told me that in one of the MD offices that was overlooking the trading floor and I couldn't even speak. I held back tears and I went down to that river past the Conrad hotel near the ferry, and sat on a bench and cried my eyes out the rest of the day. I was broke. My dreams crashed right in front of me. Btw I came from a non-target school so front office internships like that at GS were not a thing. I networked my way to get that role. That's the only way I got it.
Honestly, I don't have a youtube public channel or anything like you do, but everything you brought up was SOO true and I really wish I had a platform for some of the things I saw that summer. I never got the return offer but I would like to shed some light on the situation because there is so much shit that goes on there that people don't see on the inside.
I'm sorry if this sounds like an opportunity for self-promotion, but I would really love the chance to maybe make a video on your channel with you and just discuss our experience there because, from the people I spoke with, I feel like some students need to hear what really happens when you the full-time offer there.
If that isn't something you are interested in, I totally get it but I don't have a channel or anything so I don't have anything to gain. I would just like a platform to tell people about my experience and what it's really like to work front office at GS.
If not, I totally understand :) after all, I am just some random guy commenting on your video lol. Either way, love this video, you def have a new sub!
This was actually quite insightful. Thanks for sharing your experience!
I love it when geniuses talk about getting FAANG(ish) jobs like its a walk in the park and not liking them. I hope someday I get good enough to have options like these.
drive.google.com/folderview?id=1YP_-yqhS3_exi6Kfo8Gq82qIyMlJy6_V
@@eduardkoch5213 what was this?
I interned at Goldman Sachs (London) years ago. I remember at some point during the first week, they brought out sandwiches etc for the interns to have for lunch and network. But when the tech interns tried to have some, the HR people (or HCM as they like to call themselves) got very aggressive to us. Turns out, the food was just for the Securities (trading) interns and we had to leave and walk down the street and buy our own lunches.
There is definitely a hierarchy. As a software engineer, you will have the best experience at a company that is tech or prioritises tech. I also recently found out about the pay differences of software engineers at investment banks vs tech firms and I feel like I have been living under a rock this whole time. I have worked at other investment banks, but now pivoting into actual tech.
This was so open and honest, thank you for the great insight
Hey Tina! This video was so informative and entertaining. It was a pleasant surprise to come up in my feed ☺️
"I assume that it's the people that care about prestige that do. Again, not gonna lie, back then I cared a lot more about prestige because I was a lot more insecure about my abilities and didn't really know what to do with my life. So prestige was a way to prove to myself and others that I was doing well."
You aptly put into words something I, and a lot of other people, are facing but can't seem to realise completely (or maybe don't want to). Thank you for being honest with us, being transparent and mindful about yourself like that is not only difficult but requires humility. I don't doubt that some people in Goldman really love the work that they do and don't mind the hierarchy, but you've confidently said it's fine to say no to a prestigious job simply because you think it's not for you. I could never pull myself to do that because I care too much about reputation and prestige. I should be myself and live my life for myself, not for others. Your confidence and mindfulness is infectious and acted as a push for me. Confidence is not the guarantee of your ability but your willingness to try. I will dare to fail from now on and take it easy. Thank you very much Tina!
Your comment just made my day :) ❤️❤️
Great information! Corporate hierarchy is one of the pivotal factors in me starting my DS journey. Thanks Tina!
So glad you liked it ❤️Totally can relate!!
Wait, didn't consulting have equal levels of or even more hierarchy than IB?
It's similar, but the culture isn't as focused on "Prestige" and $$$ as it is in IB.
@@vvalk2vvalk Fair point
“The only competitor in your life should be yourselves.” :)))
Great video you're a great speaker and storyteller!
Thank you!
I was also in the new analyst tech program at GS. Good memories. I only stayed for two years before leaving. The hierarchy is real - it never goes away.
When you go in a top tier place this is what happens. Like getting into Harvard & later finding out you are not the smartest among your classmates feels shitty.
Although my experience was virtual but it was somewhat similar to what you mentioned ... thanks for sharing :)
My experience was also virtual, but for me, it was fantastic! c:
@@antonioolivares7691 ya mine too
I love this video. This is my favorite of all your videos!
When you were learning Scala for a week and figuring out everything you need to pull that Data, did they say anything to you while you were just learning?
I’m assuming they want you to be doing actual work and learning on your own time?
Did they get mad or dissatisfied that you had to learn stuff they expect you to know?
Great question! No they were really nice about it and they already knew that I didn’t know since I never listed it on my resume. I took my time and they were totally cool with it :) I really did like my team a lot 😊
This channel is amazing!!
thank you so much!! :D
Very interesting to hear about your experience! Thank you for sharing!
It reminds me people care more about what you do for a living and your position in society no matter how much money you have (even if it was enough to retire or something)
Alas is human nature isn’t it.
I had an internship at a political consulting firm. The way the CEO spoke to interns or the unorganized behavior was enough for me. So now I’m here, graduating in May will a Poli Sci degree me confused as ever
Not all bosses are the same, not all coworkers are the same
Maybe go into policy in DC
Your internship sounds very similar to actuarial work. I study actuarial science and we use a lot similar lingo like unsupervised model, seasonality, data extracting/ wrangling etc.
Omg, it is data science.....
Actuaries > Data scientists
Frank, the human anomaly labeler LMAO
😂😂😂
WOW ! Tina you are on FIre ! keep it up ! proud of you !
Thanks for sharing your experience!
Well Goldman Sachs is a bank. You should've seen it coming. Engineers don't make money for the bank.
If you had interned at Tesla, the engineers there, the R and D ones would be the most prestigious people.
Everyone wants to be appreciated. If you come in and people that are on your level...that start at the same time you do...and aren't any better than you get promoted or special treatment, it's not fair. In a work environment, your status should depend on your merits. Feeling unappreciated is terrible and clearly that was their culture from the beginning. You took a more mature/accurate stance by decided not to work there than your peers likely did. Good job. Also, it sounds like you realized that women are super social relative to men in general, so you were able to take your needs into account which is amazing. Most people are just enslaved by their job and suffer.
I had a similar experience in regards to finding out I wanted to work in a team environment with a little more human interaction. I always worked by myself and didn’t talk to anyone else unless it was a fellow intern or my boss checking in on me.
Hi Tina, really some interesting perspectives on how it's like to work with the big guys. Super frustrating with the hierachy. On the other side would i be supriced, if i heard they had a flat structere.
Looking back, would you have chosen Amazon if you knew how the intern would have been?
That’s a great question. I think I would have still chosen Goldman Sachs tbh because the work is more aligned with what I want to do ie. data science. Also I feel like I would have always wondered what it would be like to work in finance haha. It also makes me appreciate my current work environment so much more too now 😂
@@TinaHuang1 Thank you for the quick responce. It makes perfect sense. 😄
You re awesome!! Keep these great videos up.
Really helpful video! Thank you Tina :)
"it's so unfair that i was at the bottom of the heirarchy...during my internship"
well yea that's the point...
Ikr! Not everyone gets the chance to intern as a VP
There was a hierarchy inside the internship ppl loool, did you even watch the video?
@@emreken7315 we did emre. The point was that you can't be crying for the structure if you are interning. Finance is notorious for strict hierarchy and having a tech job in finance sector will most probably zone you out. It is similar to having a finance job in a tech company, you wouldn't get the same respect as your tech peers there.
@@emreken7315 no i turned it off pretty quickly once i realised how stupid she was
workplaces = heirarchy, anyone who doesn't understand that going in is at the bottom
and yes they even exist among people at the same "level", anyone who doesn't understand THAT is being promoted last or never
There’s two sides to the prestige thing. Personally I don’t give a crap about prestige, i get paid I do job I go home and pet my dog, but it does bring other opportunities and resources, thus it’s not crazy to say that prestige itself is also a type of resources. However with the workload and complexity most engineering teams have, I don’t think many engineers would like to spend time on that based on the workload . It does get very annoying when them finance kids show it off when some of us literally don’t care, but it’s also a great way for us to get into other potential roles and departments if one day you like to
Another video crossed 100k views 😊 so happy for you
thank you!! 😊😊 I can barely believe it 🙈
Sounds like this place my sister worked at called Money Matters. The hierarchy and disparity in pay among minorities working there, made her feel just like you did with all the 'prestige'. The way she and other minorities working were treated was total discrimination and she couldn't do anything about it.
Thanks for sharing, Tina. It seems you're in a much better place now, which is great. :D
However, this was entirely unsurprising unfortunately. Scrolled through the comments a bit and it seems I'm not the only one to say this. Thankfully I didn't experience it firsthand, but this is everything I heard and read myself when I was looking into getting an MBA and researching post-MBA careers.
Community Teamworks is the "give back to the community" initiative. You would have be required to perform an activity such as cleaning someplace, painting.
Hard to swallow truth: if you go into a Finance firm as a scientist, you’re going to be the Asian guy in the Jenga scene in the movie “The Big Short.” Racism? Yes but also stereotyping and - more truthfully, this is your basic job, which is to support the Sales and Trading people to help them make their multi-million dollar bonuses. You’re not here to do data science. You’re here to be trotted out so that other people can make the big bonuses, you’re not the star. You can be a scientist, you can be Asian, and you can go into finance, but if you want prestige, you have to go on the sales and trading and you have to bring the full-on aggression, raw greed, naked opportunism, and questionable morality, that’s needed to earn the prestige in this field.
Reality: ua-cam.com/video/3hG4X5iTK8M/v-deo.html
been here since 1,000 subs!
Thank you so much 😊
This is crazy. I thought I was different for going from pre-med -> research (MPhil) -> data science (MSc)!
The problem that rich people careless about being human to other because of money they end up look people as things they can just buy. So your choice was outstanding.
Wait till efinancialcareers get a hold of this. 😂
😂😅
That is so accurate, that's how I feel at my current job.
🥲
Learning scala in a week is pretty impressive
wait by strats do you mean like GM strats/Corporate Treasury strats etc ?
It is a well known fact that in finance there is a lot of hierarchy and clicks. I would say never pick finance over tech with the exception of tier one Quant firms. You will anyways make more money on average in tech and way more when normalised for time.
Interned there remotely during pandemic. Similar experience 😬, similar decision
🥲
Any tips on finding smaller quant firms to do internships at? The big ones like Goldman, etc. are just so competitive. I would love to try my hand at the field and I feel like some smaller firms would be better to explore. But idk how to find the names of these places lol
I see nothing wrong with hierarchies in competitive environments. It encourages people to do more and serve the company better. IBD and sales are more prestigious because they make gs more money than the other divisions. Only bad thing about a hierarchy is that I'm not at the top of it
It's always like that sis.. ALWAYS no matter where you work
nope. You're wrong only in Corpos who do mass recruiting. If you work for Engineering based companies or mid to small companies you'll enjoy your job.
thanks for the vid. this reminds me why i dont want to get a "job"
LOL fair enough
I don't honestly understand what attracts employees to companies that perform so poorly that they need injections of tax payer money to survive. It's doesn't make sense.
Thats exactly why Jamie Dimon said the Banks should be scared shitless about Fintech. The whole hierachy is upside down and I don´t see how big banks will be able to attract and retain talent in tech even though that´s what they need the most.
Trading on the other hand seems to be full of superstition and overconfidence. Looking at charts with a human brain is completely meaningless when you have to go up against complex mathematical models and high frequency trading like the Millenium Fund where the founder is a mathematician, not a business major.
Quants are the obvious exception but I am pretty sure most interns at Goldman Sachs have very limited knowledge about Quantitative Finance.
The ferry ride is from Istanbul 🇹🇷
I like your transitions examples
Sounds like the recruiter trying to tell me Goldman Sachs is a technology based company is trying to bs me... I'm probably not going to leave Cap One then
Thank you for posting
Yeah, I hear ya ... I also hated the big stipend, great perks, fancy workplace and the prestige...
Lmao Goldman IB has way too much self-awarded prestige for pay that’s lower than SWE and much more work
So do the software engineers and data scientists at google etc etc
Really insightful video, thanks for this. Now I have a much better idea about what it's actually like within a competitive environment like this
I was one of the committee members of the economics society in my university. We once invited Goldman to hold a networking event... hell no, I'd never work there.
Uh oh what happened
@@TinaHuang1 they just seemed overzealous and were rude to one of our committee members. plus, my ex works there, so it's a no go anyway haha.
😂 true!
Cuz I am from China so it's very common that a company has a hierarchy (especially government-owned ones), unless it is a foreign-funded company.
Imagine getting the opportunity to take an in person internship ;-;
Omg ikr 😓
FYI, the prestige thing has a dialect called corporate simping
You are a legend Tina
Management consulting sounds cooler than stats
Investment banks with toxic work culture? Say it ain't so!
Work there sucks so much that most analysts leave after 1-2 years. They even worked an intern to death once.
Yeahhh I think most ib people are doing it hoping for the exit opportunities
Noticed you've added those b rolls. Where did you find them? They make your videos very clear!
Great video! Thank you for sharing your experience. I was wondering what year of undergrad did you acquire this internship? Also did you secure any internships the summer after your freshman year?
What great insight! Thanks for the video, I subscribed about half way through :)
Question though, is "strats" essentially the same thing as "quants" at other banks, hedge funds or firms?
So glad you enjoyed it! Yup - it’s very similar. The only nuance is that some quants trade and strats generally don’t. That’s just my understanding though! Haha I may be wrong
@@TinaHuang1 Gotcha! thanks for the reply
amazon: no one reached out, gs: everyone called. yea, bc the inferior product relies more on marketing.
Interesting point
Hie Tina how were the working hours? did you work the same hours as the front office who work for around 16 hours per day? I have a finance background and starting my masters in data science and I am researching about the various industries i can work in.