Wrap-up and Final Presentatoin

Finally I have reached the end of my internship. This weekend, I am packing up all the things preparing to go back. In some sense, I miss Ann Arbor, but in others I miss Cupertino. Last Friday, I had a wrap-up meeting with my manager. Although my intern ends this coming week, since he is leaving for a business trip we had wrap-up a week before. I was told that overall my work was good. But Apple's recruiting system is not like other hi-tech companies, giving offer right at the end of internship. So I will have to wait for some time.


This week, I will have a final presentation on Thursday. I will report to my boss's boss boss, and some other staff related to my scope of work. On the same day, I will have another meeting set-up to expalin about my works so that someone here can follow-up those. Also, after all things are done, I am finally going to have a conference call with my boss to get feedback on my overall performance. I also have to give Apple a feedback about my intern experiences.


Overall, Apple's internship program seems to be very much organized, with diverse programs that interns can take advantage of. Although every people was busy, since I was assigned a manager and iBuddy, I could get as many information as I could, of course on the condition that I communicate with them in an efficient way. Besides work related stuff, there are lot's of extracurricular activities. Intern field trip to winery and SF baseball game, executive speaker series, department outing, meeting with senior managers and previous interns, lots of welcome/farewell parties and so on.
(Picture on right: Apple Corporate Games)

As a person having internship here, I am sure that future high-tech guys put Apple as their first priority intern place. You can work lots of smart Apple people, talk with them about their thoughts, sometimes see Steve Jobs at the cafeteria, sometime meet Woz and take picture with him, and also enjoy the beautiful weather at the west coast! Your experience here all depends on how you prepare and how you do at Apple!

Wrap up and final presentation

My last two weeks went by quickly as I wrapped up my workstream on the project and completed finishing touches to my deliverables. My work was focused on organization design for the client’s corporate communications department. I detailed out roles and responsibilities, assigned specific activities and helped the client identify hiring requirements. I realigned the reporting structure to enable greater focus on brand building and communication through the corporate website. I introduced the client to a methodical and rigorous approach to organization design and my framework became very popular with the management.

I feel satisfied with my contribution to the project. First, governance was a significant piece of the overall engagement and I had full ownership of developing the model. Second, I worked beyond scope to build frameworks for organization design, which led to the expansion of strategy consulting work. Finally, the governance model and organization design went through multiple discussions with the client and therefore was accepted for implementation. My mentor and buddy on the project played a great role in making this a success. His guidance and support throughout the summer gave me the confidence to go over and beyond my mandate.

The internship wrapped up with a 20-minute final presentation to the leadership of Strategy & Transformation (S&T) practice at IBM. It was great to see the immense variety of projects the interns had worked on. The leaders Saul Berman and Ron Frank provoked thought and articulated insights to build upon the work presented by the team. The final presentations added immense learning to my already rich summer.

Huge credits for making my summer so rewarding go to the lead MBA recruiter who got behind the nascent program with a great amount of personal commitment. With great persistence she influenced the leadership to staff us on the right projects, provide the necessary resources and participate in sessions. Most of all, she was warm and personable and wanted each of us to succeed. I look forward to working with her

The Final Countdown at Harley-Davidson

Three more days to go, and then I’m done with my internship at Harley-Davidson! I cannot believe that 10 weeks passed by so fast, and I’ll be headed back to Ann-Arbor in less than a week. It has been an incredible experience and I’ve learned so much. To all of you interested in general management, I’d highly recommend applying to Harley-Davidson’s Leadership Development Program (LDP) during your internship recruitment. It is probably one of the best rotational programs I have come across, and to add to that, the company is a great place to work in.

Well, I’m sure that a small part of why I am gushing so much about my internship experience is due to my visit to Sturgis, the largest annual motorcycle rally in the US. I am immensely grateful to my project sponsor for giving me the opportunity to go to the rally. It was probably the most memorable experience of my internship – the sight of all the die-hard motorcycling fans, and especially Harley-Davidson fans was quite something!

Harley-Davidson had a custom bike ride-in show at Sturgis, where bikers who had customized their bikes could ride in on their bikes and display them at our booth. Employees of Harley-Davidson then award the best bikes in various categories such as model families etc. It was fascinating to watch how much everyone there had personalized their bikes – and this gave me some good insights for my project, whose focus is to develop a long-term personalization strategy for Harley-Davidson. The picture here shows one of the customized bikes at the ride-in show.



The area around Sturgis is very scenic and most of the bikers who go to Sturgis go for a ride along Spearfish Canyon or to Mt. Rushmore. My project sponsor was kind enough to take me on his Road Glide Ultra for the most memorable ride of my life (so far!) along Spearfish Canyon. The winding roads and sights of streams and lakes on the way amidst lush green trees make for a very delightful experience. The picture here will illustrate what I am talking about.



All in all, this has been a challenging and rewarding internship experience. I really hope that I get to come back, but if not, it was still worthwhile as I learned so much. Again, I highly recommended the program for everyone interested in general management and for all you Harley-Davidson enthusiasts out there. Ride safely!

Finale

Hello everyone,

This is it! My 2 months summer internship is over now. Time does fly by.... I am sad that I have to say good bye to this great experience. However, during the internship, I had a great time with two other MBA interns. Even though each has different personality, we have overcome humps. Each member respects and listens the others. Most of all, we became great friends. I hope that this relationship lasts forever. I also had a great time with co-workers. I do really appreciate their helps and insights. I pray that our project result contributes to the company's future strategy. Here are some points that I want to go over.

1) Final presentation
We ended up having more than 150 pages of powerpoint slides. Well, we had to shrink those into 10 pages. We almost spent 2 entire days just for shrinking. After strenuous works, we finally had a presentation in front of entire strategy team. Even though our result was not super creative, it was solid enough to satisfy our audience. I do still remember their sharp questions. Trying to persuade others was not easy.

2) Final hang-out
About 15 MBA interns got together for the last farewell party. Everyone was tired but satisfied with their works and friendship, which we made during last 2 months. We reminisced from the day one of the internship orientation to the first farewell party for early leavers who had shorter projects. We also shared about favorite Korean foods and hated ones too. Good bye my friends!

3) Lessons
In-class learning is not going to work 100% in real work place. We needed to adjust what MBA has taught us mightily and, at the same time, to keep persuading co-workers. Yes, this was not a easy task, but this experience itself was another great learning opportunity.

Thank you very much for your reading! It is time to go home!! See you in AA!!

byung

What I didn’t do

(MBA, Amazon)

These days I was discussing with another Rosser what was the most valuable point of the internship. In doing so I had to go through an exercise of exploring all the positive points and picking only one. This is unfair with the other points but is a good exercise. Among the positive points I can highlight the city, the group of interns, the learning and the company itself. I have already mentioned the first couple points on a previous post so I’ll focus on the company and the main point.

It is very exciting to be part of a company that is making history. Amazon has now over $25bi in annual revenues and is still growing at over 40% a year. Not many other companies, if any, have done the same. It is definitely changing the face of the Retail. And being part of this transformation is an invaluable opportunity. There is yet a more propounding transformation Amazon is causing: the way we transfer knowledge, through e-books.

But among all, I believe that the most valuable point of my internship is this bad taste I now have in my mouth. I have now this inquietude for knowing what impact I’m going to cause in the world. Recently, I have seen the speech Jeff Bezos delivered to Princeton graduates . I learned a little bit more about his trajectory and I was profoundly uncomfortable to learn he started Amazon when he was 30. He speaks about choices and leaves us to think about what choices are we making. Jeff was able to able to impact the world twice (the face of retail and the e-books revolution) and who dares to doubt he could do it again?

If I can point out only one positive aspect of my internship, it’s definitely going to be the uneasiness I am left with. Yes, I have made new friends, yes I have enjoyed the city, yes I have learned a lot. All of this is very valid. But the best of all is what I haven’t done… yet!

Dress for Success

In one of my past posts I talked about the importance of dressing for the job you want. In this video I talk about dress in the office and how to tie 2 different types of ties. Feel free to email me with any questions about how to dress in the office.

Also the music is a little louder than I wanted but the song is "Words of Wisdom" by Hoodie Allen. He is the first artist I managed when I started my business Invite Only Management, LLC, and he is really starting to get popular so make sure to check out his music.

Winding Down!

Its amazing fast the summer program's gone that I can’t believe it’s all coming to an end this week. I presented my summer project to a team of hard core bankers and got very good reviews. Seems they were impressed by my understanding of the strategic rationale of the deal I analyzed (I wonder why I didn't take up the Corp Strategy offer I got instead, maybe I’d have aced it). At this stage in the program, the vast majority of my fellow interns are obsessed over who'd be receiving an offer from which group. Funny how your perspectives change: I have finally realized that contrary to my enthusiastic first post in this blog, I don't want to spend the next four years building models and prepping presentations in the concrete jungle that is NY. So much for mastering the universe - I'm now quite relaxed and taking things in my stride and trying to savor these last days. I spent a good chunk of last week networking with various people here at, including having an hour-long debate with a Managing Director on the merits and demerits of Obamacare (aka healthcare reform bill). Of course I was the unyielding liberal while he played the role of the rational free market advocate.

I'll be having my end of period review on Wednesday and I look forward to receiving all the superlative comments on my performance on the second half (yeah right). However the real treat would be the freedom to explore NY for a few days afterwards and hopping on a plane to Atlanta with a couple of friends before deciding whether to go back to AA for more learning (just kidding).

Let me closeout my participation in this blog by offering some tidbits of advice to incoming MBAs: if you do find yourself in a generalist Investment Banking summer internship program, bond quickly with the very first group you work with, be flexible in your group preferences (I was not, for personal reasons) and spend a boatload of time with as many people in your group as you can. May the force be with you!

P.S. Kindly forgive any typos you see in this post..... I'm typing on my iPhone keyboard and needless to say, my thumbs are quite arthritic now.

How to do a Good Internship?

Again, time flew and I have only three weeks left until the end of my internship. Most of my projects are now at the final stage. There were several things that went on well, but also several others that I feel more could have been done. All these will be an asset for me in preparing for my full time job search. I also got some feedback after my seventh week, which was really a valuable one. Here are some of my recommendations while doing internship.

First, before coming for the internship it would help very much if you have a high-level plan of what you will do during internship. For example, you can plan some networking lunches with people at Apple or even some other people at bay area high-tech companies. You can also plan to write an intern diary to track what/how you are doing to improve yourself every week. As for me, I memorized some things that I should do or shouldn't do, but I didn't write a daily intern diary. But I guess when you write one it will definitely help you.

Second, try to understand the industry so that you can communicate well throughout doing your project. Although you are working for specific company, while doing work your knowledge on the industry helps dealing with other employees at the company. They will know that you are prepared and passionate about what you are doing at work.

Third, as a perspective of balancing your work and life, I suggest you plan to enjoy your weekend. Sometimes, intern life can make you get stressed a lot. Especially for me who is an international student, I was stressed while communicating since I am not a native speaker. Especially for international students, conference call seems to be the hardest communication you have to overcome to communicate well in a US company.

Anyway I hope good luck to all of the interns!

I will come back for more

One feels a strange mix of emotion at the end of an intense summer internship. A feeling of relief as work winds down combined with a tinge of reluctance at putting a pause on newly formed professional relationships. Would I return full time to Credit Suisse?

Of the myriad factors to consider when choosing a full time job, the strongest pull to join Credit Suisse would be the people. Throughout the summer, I have received help and friendship from many bankers in CS. They have been open and honest with advice, providing important insight into the ins and outs of an investment banker's life. Not only has everyone in the office been polite and kind, they have taken the time to teach me so much about the financial industry. Their amiability alone confirms that the working environment will be a pleasant and conducive one.

As for the nature of the work, we have all learned about job satisfaction in our MO classes. Task significance, autonomy and task variety make for vital intrinsic motivation. Investment banking offers all of these. First, you are staffed on multiple projects at once. We work on M&A deals, IPO launches, follow-on offerings and pitches. We also have to prioritize and manage our time efficiently so that deadlines on multiple projects are met. It is altogether challenging and stimulating. Task significance is a given. All projects represent significant milestones in a company's life cycle - bankers advise on important strategic and financial decisions and get the chance to mingle with the CEOs and CFOs of billion-dollar institutions. One couldn't have a more satisfying out-of-college experience.

All in all, it has been an inspiring and privileged summer. As a college student with minimal work experience, the opportunity to see and learn from industry experts has been mind-blowing.

So the answer to the question, is yes.

Internship done!

The summer is finally over, and what a great experience it has been. I got a chance to explore the world of consulting, work with some very smart people and learn a fantastic amount of information within a very short period of time. Since the project was ending the same week as my internship was, the last two weeks were critical. This was when we made the final push for our client deliverables. The model that I initially developed was used extensively by the team to nail down the quantitative aspects of our recommendations. Also, the principal on my project thought that this model would be a great tool for the client as they went ahead with the implementation in the coming months. So I had to spend some time cleaning up the model, making last minute changes and including the relevant background information so that the model was easily usable by the client. It’s one thing when you develop a model for your analysis. It’s something completely different when you are developing a model that someone else will use – this was a key learning for me. Always develop the model as if someone else were going to use it. I also had to do my final presentation at the Chicago office last week. My manager was extremely understanding about the criticality of that, and gave me some time off so that I could work on my deck. The team pitched in to review my deck and gave some great feedback on how to make the presentation stronger.

I just want to finish with another observation from my experience. There is one key skill that I have noticed is common among the senior folks. With any problem, they have a laser-like focus on the fundamental question we are trying to answer, and are always asking “how does this piece of work answer that question?”. This enables them to break down even the most complex problems into simple relevant blocks. And this is a skill I definitely want to develop over the next few years.

Well, to summarize I had a fantastic summer experience. I couldn’t have asked for more. Now, three weeks of down time before the next year at school. Thanks for reading, and take care!

Final Post

This will be my final post on this blog, yes I could talk about the lessons I learned, about UBS, or more about Sales and Trading. But that really is boring stuff for me to talk about; after all in my view aside from learning about company specific things like culture, infrastructure and workflow, the life lessons really are the same across all internships. Hence I will attempt to explain the sharp drop in equity markets over the past 2 days instead. Hopefully you, the reader, finds that more interesting and applicable.

So the Fed came out on Tuesday and confirmed that they will be using principal payments from the mortagage backed securities they purchased during the crisis to reinvest in treasuries (recall basic bond math and all the articles in the financial press during fall of 2008 here). They further stated that the purpose of this is to keep their balance sheet at a constant size. In layman's terms this means the Fed will engage in a further, albeit much smaller, round of injecting cash into the financial system. This should be bullish for stocks right? Yes, it was on initial impressions, hence the short lived rally in equities post the immediate announcement. And then people started to realize the facts - the Fed is keeping its balance sheet constant, so going forward, aside from really small investments (around 150 billion), there will not be another stimulus or huge amounts of cash printed and pushed into the system. Furthermore, it was a policy announcement, not an operational one, i.e. no principal payments were reinvested.

The immediate result of this was the further tanking of the stock market and a sharp rally in the US dollar as the market came round.

Do note however, that the fact remains that the US economy is on tenterhooks, and the possibility of a double dip recession remains looming on the horizon. Implicit in the Fed's announcement and decision was the basis of a weak US economy, hence the need for a little nudge and reassurance. However the market plays out to this is anyone's guess, but unfortunately for the Fed, they remain cornered in a tight spot between a weakening economy and fiscal profligacy - not a good spot to be in.

Bottom of the 9th: Game Almost Over

(BBA, Washington Nationals Baseball Club)

Hey Everyone,

I am sad to say that this is my last post of the summer. I obviously do not want my internship to end, but I am also excited because that means I am headed back to Ann Arbor that much sooner.

I have learned so much this summer working for the Washington Nationals. I have made some great friends, with the other co-interns, full time employees, and most importantly with my supervisor. I have learned so much from Heather this summer. She truly is the most hardworking and driven individual I have ever met. She is non-stop working, and always giving it her all. I think the relationships I have made will be one of the best things I take away from my entire internship. I have learned something different everyday and from every person within my department, and within the organization.

I learned so much this summer, more than I ever expected. Of course I learned a lot about the Nationals and the Sports Industry. Most importantly, I learned that jobs are not Monday-Friday and 9-5. During my internship, I put in a lot of hours, and a lot of those hours were on weekends. It taught me a valuable lesson: that jobs are way different from school and do not follow a Monday-Friday (or Thursday) schedule, and that’s the real world.

One thing I really am taking away from this internship is the real-life, unique experience I was given. I was able to work with an organization during one of their most exciting times. This season, while I was here, the Nationals brought in a new Pitcher: Steven Strasburg. This was such an exciting time to be working for the Nationals, because everyone was so excited about Strasburg, and everyone was genuinely happy to be at work.

Throughout my internship, I think I have shown my boss my incredible work ethic. I think I have grown as a person during my internship. I came in about 9 weeks ago, scared, nervous, and anxious. Now, I am confident in myself and my work.

Overall, I have enjoyed my 9 weeks here with the Nationals. It has been a lot of work but also a lot of fun. I hope everyone enjoys their last few weeks of summer!

Almost done

I am at the final stretch now, with two weeks left to my final presentations. All interns in my VP’s team do a five-minute presentation demonstrating their summer project during a 2-hour meeting at the end of the internships. All the other interns are software developers. Since I am the first and only MBA intern this team has had, my presentation will be unique. The first thing I learned in a communication class I took at Berkeley Haas last year was “Know Thy Audience” (no that is not how the professor phrased it). I have to tailor my presentation for software engineers and tech gurus, which I hope will not be too hard since I was a software engineer not too long ago. The second presentation is the famous Amazon white paper – a six page executive summary of my research, findings, results etc. I will present this white paper to 6 to 10 people during a 45 minute meeting. As with everything else, everyone is incredibly helpful. I hope to have it reviewed by a couple of people over the next two weeks.

This project reinforced a few beliefs I already had and taught me many new things. First, I do love numbers. Time flew by when I was working in excel on projections and models. I love a data driven job where I am analyzing trends to make recommendations. Second, there is a lot of room for me to improve when analyzing data. One of the principles at Amazon is to dig deep. I learned early in my internship through feedback that I needed to do more of that -- get to the core of the data, figure out what the underlying assumptions are, figure out what the methodology for collecting the data is. I initially hesitated to follow up with people because I did not want to disturb them or take too much of their time, but I learned that it is okay and even encourage to ask many questions. The biggest take-away from the summer is that I should foster my curiosity and that applies to all aspects of my life.

My project strategy takes shape at Harley-Davidson

(The picture shows the oldest known Harley-Davidson motorcycle which can be viewed at the H-D museum in Milwaukee)

With 2 weeks to go, I am getting into fifth gear to shape my recommendations for my project on developing a long-term personalization strategy for Harley-Davidson. As I had indicated in an earlier post, this strategy is a holistic look at what the company can do over 3 horizons to personalize the entire customer experience. And believe me, the project is as interesting as it sounds!

The Leadership Development Program (LDP) has an annual conference where all the LDP interns, incumbents and alumni gather over sessions and dinner. This year we had a workshop on globalization and sustainability. We split up into groups and brainstormed over the two topics and then got back together to exchange our ideas. The sheer knowledge and creativity of the group impressed me a lot – I always find it amazing that companies do not use more of their brain power to generate innovative ideas everyday!

The workshop was followed by a panel discussion on our international efforts, which was again very candid and interesting. We ended the sessions with a town hall with our CEO, Keith Wandell, and COO, Matt Levatich on the topic of innovation. This was followed by a dinner where I got to meet with other LDP alumni and some of the most interesting people in the company.

Harley-Davidson has a plant in York, Pennsylvania, which is undergoing tremendous transformation right now. We visited the plant yesterday via Baltimore, MD. We hired 2 cabs from the Baltimore airport and drove down to the plant. The visit was extremely well-organized, and we had the opportunity to meet some very impressive people at the plant. The strength of Harley-Davidson is the passion of its employees for the product, and more so at the assembly plants. This was very evident when we heard the pride with which all employees spoke about their work. Being a consultant, I have worked with many companies over the last 8 years, and I cannot think of a single other company that even comes close with respect to both, customer and employee loyalty.

As you must have guessed by now, I have become a big fan of the company, and for a person who has never had anything to do with the manufacturing industry or motorcycles, that’s saying a lot! My final post will wrap up my time at Harley-Davidson, and also have incredible pictures of my trip to Sturgis. Till then, have fun riding!

2 more weeks to go!

Hi everyone. It has been already 6 weeks since I started the summer internship. Wow time does fly by~ Today I want to share how communication is important during the internship. The communication problem almost cost our project.

Since our project mentor had to take care of three other projects, we, three MBA interns, did not have real chance to talk to him for about two weeks. Yes, he was really busy and could not review our progress neither. Then problem occured. Our approach of project was not following the intension of our team leader, which he never mentioned before. A week before the interim report to team leader, our mentor noticed this issue and ordered us to redo the research in 4 days, which we have been doing for last two weeks.

Suddenly, we were under pressure. We decided to re-schedule the project and, painfully, shorten the project scope because we did not have enough time to complete the business proposal. To make the matter worse, we also had to complete extra report for the interim report: don't ask me why we have to write a report for a report. I guess that each team has its own working culture. Well, we did our best, and the interim report got a bad review by the team leader. But our team leader's frank opinion on the report greatly helped us to have clear understanding and picture of the project. His sharp comments helped us to build better framework, problem solving, and recommendation.

I am not blaming our mentor. It was our fault. We should have actively talked to the mentor, even though he was super busy. Helping him by not bothering him (no conversation) is not real help for both us and the mentor. Well, good news is that our project is heading right direction, and our team leader is fine with shortened project scope. We will see how our final presentation goes.

Penultimate week at IBM

I am sitting in a stylish New York cafe and thinking how much I'm going to miss the city when I wrap up in two weeks. The combination of a challenging project and staying in the Village (NYU area) has made IBM a rewarding choice for my summer.

It has been an exciting week. For the last three weeks I have been developing new frameworks for the client to think through their organization design. This involves breaking down roles into modular activities and then matching them to skill-set and career direction of people in the organization, as well as using it to identify hiring / outsourcing needs for the client. This week my model found traction with the Head of HR and hopefully this week we will put it to use. It's an opportunity to establish a personal brand on the project and I am looking forward to it.

IBM recently published their 2010 Global CEO Study on how the nature of leadership has changed in the new economic environment, and the issues that are most important to them. Interestingly, they conducted a parallel study with students globally, gathering their perspective on the same issues. The intern group had a fascinating discussion with Partners on the study, that added insight into the stark shift of beliefs from the current generation of leaders to the next. Central to this shift are increased faith in analysis-based decision making, new-found comfort with globalization and huge focus on sustainability (ecological and economic). We had some enthralling discussions on the role of governments, social enterprises and new communication networks.

As I shape the final deliverables of the project, I am keen on defining my career path at IBM. I would like to focus my career on developing operating models for my clients. I want to help clients have nimble yet streamlined, entrepreneurial yet integrated operations. Sure, this duality is difficult to visualize in traditional management thinking, but companies like Singapore Airlines, Samsung and Starbucks have innovated at turning such trade-offs into synergies in the past. This week I will reach out to Partners for their guidance on shaping my consulting career in this direction.

Thomson Reuters Final Post

Although my internship at Thomson Reuters lasts two more weeks, this will be my final post. That said, I'd like to make some final reflections on my experience thus far. It's been both a challenging and rewarding experience overall, and I learned a lot both about business and my own self.

I can see myself in strategy. Working on the strategy team this summer definitely opened up my eyes to the value and opportunities that strategy brings to the table. Strategy is essentially the backbone of any organization. Without a clear understanding of the past, view of the present, and vision for the future, businesses cannot truly evaluate opportunities and take calculated risks. I loved the idea that my work sat on the C-level executive's desks multiple times throughout the summer, even if in a small way. Working with real issues on a day to day basis, and constantly pushing the company to be more competitive in both existing and new areas is an exciting line of work that I would love to pursue when full time hiring comes around. I am open to a management consulting firm where I can gain exposure to different industries, travel, and learn from the best, or on the corporate side like this summer. Regardless, I think strategy is an amazing role to start a career and understand the big challenges that go into running a succesful business.

I would love to stick with media and entertainment. Having worked in media strategy this summer and entertainment strategy last summer (Six Flags Inc.), I can safely say I've found an industry that I find both interesting, exciting, and intellectually challenging. Not only is the industry rapidly evolving (which provides an excellent opportunity to be at the forefront of these changes) but also it deals in customer segments I can relate to and products/services that I'm passionate about. That may be sports, television, film, news, or publishing, among others. I feel like this is an exciting business that I would love to be a part of.

One thing that I didn't receive from this experience was the contrast between company sizes. There are obviously benefits to working in a large corporation (networking, training, reputation, etc.) which I've experienced a ton in the past two summers. However, I have yet to truly explore the benefits of a smaller company--task ownership, close-knit relationships, and tremendous growth opportunities. Looking ahead, I'm still not sure whether I want to continue to develop my skills at a large company with the resources of a Thomson Reuters or Six Flags, or if I'd rather gain some valuable exposure at a start-up.

I've definitely gained some invaluable experience this summer at Thomson Reuters, and it will be interesting to see how I leverage those into a career after graduation.

Alex Weiss (BBA '11)

E-Retail: is it Tech or Retail?

(MBA, Amazon)
Frugality: that is one of the core values at Amazon and door desks are an enduring reminder of that. Although you can see it across the company I think this is only a mean to a greater core value: customer obsession. Amazon is constantly seeking to satisfy its customers because it truly believes that happy customer equals more revenue in the future.
Amazon’s culture has been the most surprising part of the internship thus far. I’m positively impressed by seeing Jeff’s statement on maximizing long term FCF percolating through daily decisions. It is interesting to seeing a company maintaining that even after becoming a multi-billion-dollar organization. Some examples are: expansion to new regions where profits might not anytime soon, and discussions around making changes to the company’s current capabilities to accommodate a potential important customer at AWS.
Amazon is constantly classified as a Tech company that happens to be a retail company. I would argue it is a retail company that happens to sell products over the internet. I say that based on some aspects of its culture that I have seem, and I am totally biased by the fact that I am working at the more high-tech portion of the company (Amazon Web Services). Let’s go to the facts: Amazon is a low margin company (retail like), from this fact comes frugality; the company’s goal is to have the largest world’s selection (retail like), a high-tech company would probably have a goal related to its products; Jeff Bezos in its famous 1997 letter to the shareholders clearly states that the company is working to maximize future FCF (retail?, Tech?), although future FCF is definitely the ultimate component on any company’s valuation, I have never seen a high-tech firm completely ignoring quarterly results in favor of a greater good.
I believe it is important for Amazon’s success that it is a retail company. What is not (retail like) is probably the fast growth and innovation at Amazon. And this definitely distinguishes Amazon as a unique culture.

Nearly There!

How time flies when you’re having fun! I've been very busy since my last post and a lot of things have happened. Last week, we had our golf day outing, where we spent the whole day schmoozing with the big guns i.e. Managing Directors. It was pretty hilarious, watching people who'd never played golf as they went through 18 holes. We didn't get back to Tribeca until 9:30 PM and although some of us had to go back to work, there'll be no brownie points for guessing that the summer associates' section on my floor was relatively quiet (and empty) as we'd worked muscles we never knew existed.

Another major event was going to a nice restaurant with the family on my birthday. They were surprised that I was able to take a break from work to do dinner (thanks to a wonderfully understanding Director that ordered me out of the office). I'm shamelessly advertizing here, but if anyone reading this is ever in New York, be sure to try out "La Sirene" on Broome Street. It’s a delightfully cosy French restaurant (just blink and you’ll miss it) and they make the best hanger steak ever. Of course that wasn’t the only thing good about the day – getting to have a family dinner for the first time in 7 weeks was definitely a treat by itself. Other than this, I have very little perspective to offer in the way of life in New York as practically all of my summer has so far been spent with the (four?) hallowed walls of the bank. Maybe if this blog stays open until after my last day at work, I'll be able to regale you all with detail of the culture and entertainment I plan on taking in. But until that time, please bear with me.

I need not tell anyone that my industry is pretty tough, but nothing could have prepped me for the reality. That said, there's something to be said for the people I work with and their resilience. Networking has been pretty exhausting and despite our best efforts (I've been told I'm very reserved), a number of us are still not sure that we've made that critical "aha" connection. Although I will keep on bringing my “A” game to the pitch, I definitely no longer worry about not getting a full time offer as I now see that I win either way. In any case whatever the end is, all I can say is that “I’m nearly there”.

Dell: Final Post

It’s the home stretch. I can’t believe how quickly time flew by. 10 weeks just went “whoosh”, and I am finally ready to present my findings.

Well, almost. Every day involves meeting several people, presenting the findings to them, massaging the deck a little bit more. But it’s about ready. I will be presenting it at a director-level meeting either this Friday or the one after that. It’s all fairly fluid here at Dell.

My project involved a long period in which I essentially collected data that was previously unavailable; and then after I collected it I started to analyze it and construct my recommendations. Unfortunately, the data got to me only a week ago, and at first one of the only time slots they found for an executive presentation was a week from them. You can imagine that some sort of a panic set in; 12 hour workdays became the norm and I scurried to get everything ready in time. Fortunately, another timeslot was located a couple of weeks from then – but the scurrying had paid off , and most of the recommendations and presentation are ready for the original date (which was supposed to be tomorrow).

Who says that procrastination is bad, eh?

In news on the social front – it’s sad to see everyone I’ve become friendly with leave. The first wave of Dell interns is leaving at the end of this week and I’m sorry to see them go. Yesterday a whole bunch of us went on a boat again. Same boat as 4th of July. Same fun people. Same fun activities.

In two weeks, I will be back in Ann Arbor. To be honest, I had a blast in Austin – but I will be happy to leave and get back to my own apartment; back into life in Ann Arbor with my MBA friends and a lifestyle I had grown accustomed to and fond of. Farewell Austin, you’re an awesome city. I hope to be back soon!

Sunset on internship

The sun is setting on my summer internship. With just two weeks left to go, my feelings are mixed regarding the end of my stint at CS. I feel reluctant to leave the people I have spent an entire summer building up good relationships with, yet excited that senior year is about to begin.

The culture at CS is amiable yet professional. You'll probably never meet a more diverse workforce than the one at the Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) group at CS. Even though I am in America, I am surrounded by people from every corner of the globe - there are people from Nigeria, India, Singapore, America, the Netherlands, Canada, France, Australia and Bulgaria. It is stimulating to work on a daily basis with people of such different backgrounds and nationalities. For this reason, I deeply appreciate the CS company culture. It makes an effort to hire employees from different nations and of different backgrounds. People can be themselves instead of trying to fit into a corporate mold.

One thing I am grateful for at the TMT group at CS is that our group head has taken the effort to organize weekly lunches through the summer with various high-level people working throughout the bank. There was the head of equity capital markets, the new chief of branding and communications, and just last week there was the head of fixed income. The head of fixed income is such an inspiring figure. Not only does he manage risk-taking at CS effectively, he also finds time to liaise between CS and the government. In a time when governmental regulation has increasing potential to affect the industry, it is vital that every bank has someone who can effectively communicate the bank's position to government officials. He has even had long conversations with Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi.

The group will be deciding if we receive return offers on August 6. That's only a week of real work left before our fates are decided. Onwards and upwards I say.

Half Way Through

Six weeks have passed since my beginning. I have been concentrating on gathering information for one of my projects and standardizing a process for another project. Since my boss and most of the team members were on a business trip, I got exposure into a new situation at Apple.

(1) Communication and Teamwork
While doing my projects, communicating with others at Apple was really important. It is quite common in all companies, but especially communicating well at Apple operations was really important. First reason is because Apple is so concerned about security. Since it is hard to get information, you have to be good in explaining well what you do and why you need the information. Second reason is operations specific. Since most of the people are traveling, e-mail communication skills are required. But before that, you have to meet as much people as possible during their stay at Cupertino campus. While my first MBA days, communication and teamwork was almost all that I learned, but using the skills and theory that I learned in a real environment gave me more takeaways.

(2) Function Based Structure
I had more executive speaker series with people at HR, operations, software. One thing interesting was one I heard from HR person. He told us the unique aspects of Apple organization. The one he emphasized was the functional based organization structure. He told us that functional based structure keeps Apple's employees professional in their areas and keep all people in a flat structure. I also had other chances to know about Apple operation by talking to senior leadership people of operations at a breakfast event. Apple gives as many chances as possible to let interns get to know Apple. I think I should utilize them more in my second half of intern.

(3) SF Giants Game
This week interns went to the SF Giants game. When I got to the stadium, I could see lots of SF famous players‘ biography with their signatures. Talking about baseball with colleagues seemed to be another way of enhancing communication and sharing each one’s interests. Good that I am a huge baseball fan.

Getting there

I can't believe that I am now in the closing stages of my summer internship. Two more weeks to go, and that's it! Since the end of my internship is coinciding with the end of the client engagement, things are really heating up now (as if they weren't busy enough already!). But I have had some great learning experiences over the past two weeks as I have been gradually pushed out of my comfort zone.

The first learning is the value of qualitative information. While my engineering background has made me comfortable with quantitative data, I am slowly learning that qualitative information also can make or break a recommendation despite what the numbers tell you. And since qualitative data is just that - qualitative, it is difficult to exactly structure what specific piece of information you need for an analysis. The second important learning for me was managing client interviews. This was something, again, that was completely new to me. As I conducted more interviews, I found myself increasingly asking direct and pointed questions to get to the point. I think this is an extremely important skill for leaders to have. with the amount of technology out there today, the data available is infinitely huge. Managers who having the ability to ask the right questions at the right time to the right people will have a huge advantage over those who don't. And I think consulting is a great way to develop and hone that skill.

Now, I am nearing the end stages of my analysis and my work is really helping the team build out their recommendations for a key part of the project. Yes, there are projected to be some $$$ savings (Good, now I can quantify another bullet point on my resume!). I also got a chance to present my analysis to the Principal on my project. He had some great suggestions to make, and I am currently working on incorporating them into my analysis. If all goes well, my workstream will be presented to the COO of the client organization!

The next week is a big week for me. I have to make two additional presentations - one to the partner on my project and the other, to the entire Chicago office. So in between all of this, I am working on putting those decks together too! Yes, good times.

Till next (and last) time, happy readings!

The Wrap Up Report

It's been a good ride this summer and with just over a week left my internship is coming to a close. I've learned so much this summer about what I want to do with my career, office culture, and the sports and entertainment industry in particular. Since I feel I have learned so much, I feel it is my duty to impart my new found wisdom upon you with my 3 simple easy tips to making the most out of your summer internship.


1. NETWORK- This may seem extremely obvious but it is often done wrong or not enough. I think I have done a pretty good job, but may have not done enough. Some ways to network wrong are:
- Start asking about jobs or connections your superiors have too early in the internship.
- Ask people for a recommendation when you do not have a lot of experience working with this person.
- Suck up. This is my biggest pet peeve. I hate when interns make it a competition with other interns to get on the good side of the boss. And to be honest your boss will recognize this as well.

One way to make sure you do enough networking throughout the summer is to get your immediate supervisor on your side early in the summer. Get them to help you set up with meetings in the company. Also when you see someone you have never met in the company don't be afraid to introduce yourself. Lastly always have your elevator pitch ready. This will allow you to be always ready even when caught off guard.

2. Have fun. Make friends, laugh, and always have a smile on. If you have a positive outlook on your job or at least portray that to your co-workers and superiors, the people in the office will enjoy working with you. This can lead to my first tip which is networking. Because if you are happy people will open up to you and want to help you. No one wants to help the debbie downer of the office.

3. Dress for the job you want. This is a motto that I have stressed time and time again. Appearance and hygiene are two of the most overlook aspects in the office. Wearing a tie or something equivalent for girls if it is not required goes a long way. People recognize it and will remember you. It is subtle touch that separates you from the rest of the pack. Remember, and summer internship is just a 10 week interview. Doing the little things and showing committment will get you the recommendation or job offer you covet.

Best of luck in the future.

Work-Life Schmalance

Balance, schmalance. Let me start off by saying that work-life balance as an investment banking analyst or associate is next to non-existent. Given the harsh demands of the job, we spend an inordinate majority of our waking hours in the office cranking spreadsheets, memos and pitchbooks.

Our schedules are not our own. We live and breathe at the mercy of work's ebb and flow. Your time is never yours. Carrying a blackberry around may seem cool, but it virtually connects you to work 24/7 and puts you at the beck and call of your superiors.

As analysts right out of college, the hours are still manageable. Young and energetic, ready to pour our souls into our careers, we are fully committed to performing the best we can at work. The story is a little different for associates. At a later period in life, associates are looking to start families, commit to relationships and build a home for themselves. Associates who are thinking of having children, or who have just had children, find little time to give to their families because of their work.

So why do so many people still fling themselves at the industry? Firstly, and I loosely quote a VP, you have to be greedy for money to be in the industry. Compensation is obviously a major draw for most joining the industry. Secondly, and I quote another analyst now - "you get in and you get out". People join for the exit opportunities, whether it be to hedge funds or PE shops. The experience sets you up for life (arguably).

It is a tough decision. I think when you choose investment banking, you are not choosing a job but a lifestyle. You must think about whether you are willing to cede control of your schedule, whether you are ready to lose touch with a few friends along the way, and whether you can handle a family/relationship in addition to work.

Box Checked!

Literally posting this 32 minutes after I delivered my final presentation to senior management and with one week to go, it's really impossible for me to realize how time has flown by. I guess just by looking at my presentation, I can see the time I've spent on strategies and executions from day 1 till this morning. And it ended with a lot of drama as the presentation has been rescheduled 5 times (3 times today).

Since it's time for me to wrap up my internship and start thinking about vacation before returning for my final year, I feel blessed for the experience I've had business-wise. Developing a promotional strategy for two top products, leading subsets of programs that are actually being executed, and gaining exposure to business planning processes as a marketing intern is more than I'd ever expect. Of course it all came with a lot of hard work and long working hours but the feeling at the end is that I did my best.

Something I really wanted to stress and there's not enough to say about its importance especially for international students coming is the MAP project. As I mentioned in my early posts, because of that I got a shot at interviewing with Hill's Pet Nutrition and ended up working for and impressing them. If it wasn't for that I would still have a job but not something that I would like or get paid for. Yes it would be a free internship! Times are hard and coming from a different country to start a new career requires sacrifices and strong will. Everyone was telling me that it was impossible to get consumer goods internship because I didn't have the proper experience. And yes people got jobs on campus while I was struggling to even get an interview. But in my opinion, that doesn't mean anything. Work hard and go after your dreams, and you will succeed. MAP was my shot at succeeding and I made sure I took full advantage of it. If you think about it, I ended up having a 5 month internship... 2 months working on the MAP project and 3 months working as an intern.

So for all you incoming MBA's out there consider my point of view and see how you can leverage it because time flies and before you know it you will be at the end of your first year still trying to figure out what's going on.

Take care everyone! Enjoy the summer and see you in September.

All That Glitters is not Gold

Cliche title for an oft misunderstood metal... but one that has held, and continues to hold tremendous importance to man. As you can guess, I'm on a desk dealing in precious metals, chiefly gold; I will try to explain the mysteries of investing in the metal.

On a simplified basis, gold demand can be split into two broad categories: investment demand and commercial demand. Both names are self explanatory, but to give you a more specific definition, investment demand is comprised of buyers from the financial community - hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds, anyone looking to speculate or hold gold for the long term. Commercial demand consists of buyers from industry, namely from dental services and car makers. Another important part of this category is made up of individual buyers - India is a huge retail market for gold due to its important uses in their culture, namely in dowries and numerous festivals they celebrate.

Considering both parts of the demand picture for gold, it becomes obvious that it is viewed both as a commodity as well as a store of value. This stands in contrast to other metals which are mainly used as industrial materials. Consider as a short example gold's main rival - silver. Silver is constantly mined and consumed as an industrial metal, and this can be observed in its price, which trades in double digits, compared to gold which trades in triple digits. Also consider that gold is hardly ever consumed as most of it is held physically as jewelry or in bars, to be converted into value later. This means its supply is mostly fixed, while demand fluctuates according to investment and commercial demand.

Thus, gold essentially becomes a currency - which harks back to the era of the gold standard, or the Bretton-Woods agreement. From that legacy, and the metal's cultural history of being a material valued by all, gold today fills the modern role of a currency of last resort, a hedge against inflation, or a hedge against the US dollar. All three roles are extremely similar and are based in a common line of reasoning - should paper based currencies, as they are doing now, continue to be printed freely to stimulate global economies, the fiat currencies of America and Europe will slowly lose their value, making gold even more valuable as the hard asset holds its value better than the paper asset.

Ultimately, the physical gold custody trade is an armageddon trade and is definitely a tail risk event... but it never hurts to be prepared does it?

DMB Hits Nationals Park!

(BBA, Washington Nationals Baseball Club)

Hello everyone! So the last time I posted, I explained a typical day at Nationals Park. However, from my last post until now, it has been anything but typical here at the stadium. Last Friday evening, we had the Dave Matthews Band concert here at the Park. Sounds cool, right? Yeah, it was...but it was also a lot of work for my department. This concert was my department’s biggest event this summer. Luckily for us, the Nationals were on the road for 10 days and we had the All-Star Break, so we didn’t have to worry about games and could just focus on the concert.

We put in long hours and worked extremely hard. There were some minor “catastrophes,” but at the end of the day, the concert was amazing and was a huge success. We even got to watch Dave Matthews Band perform in a suite, which was a lot of fun. It was also nice just to sit and watch after a long day of work. But after the concert ended, we were back to work making sure cleanup was on schedule. Besides the 108 degree weather, one of our biggest problems with the concert was protecting the field. Once the concert ended, we had to get the cleanup started right away so we could remove the covering on the field to allow the grass to finally get some air! Sounds funny, but working with a baseball team, the grass is almost like one of the players.

Looking back on the concert, I would do it again in a second. I loved seeing my hard work and long hours help create an amazing show that was enjoyed by 40,000 fans. Now that the concert is over, our department is exhausted, and it is kind of nice to have the team back home for a 7 game homestand. Home games are like a break for my department, because they follow a very similar structure and routine. After a hectic week with the concert, it is nice to have a “Typical Day @ Nationals Park.”

I cannot believe I am starting my 7^th week here with the Nationals. After this homestand, I only have about a week and half left of my internship. I guess time really does fly by when you’re having fun. I look forward to updating everyone on my final weeks here at Nationals Park.

PS: check out DMB’s concert schedule…maybe he is coming to your town!

Wrapping up!

As I get closer to the end of my internship, it’s a good time to think about what I’ve learned during this time. One thing I did well was insisting on getting to know the manufacturing and R&D process. After my request, a Company tour was organized and I was able to visit the application labs and the manufacturing plants. I confirmed that I love to visit operation facilities in order to get a better picture of the process but I would rather spend most of my time at my office. I also learned that different projects keep me excited. The possibility to interact with people is also key for my ideal job, I wouldn’t want to be isolated. On the other hand, one thing I could have done better is networking prior and during my internship. For instance, the Division General Manager is a Ross alumn. I wish I had contacted him before.

In order to present results for my projects, I will do one presentation for each one of them, before my manager and the project sponsors. After that, I will do one presentation for the higher management, on my final week. It would be a very good opportunity to gain visibility and show my work. I need to excel at both the presentations and the networking in order to leave the positive impression I want to leave. And I will be leaving soon, next August 13th will be my last day.

Eleven weeks, which seemed like a long period at the beginning of my internship, are coming to an end so fast! In a nutshell, and without a doubt, I can say it was a good experience! I meet good people, enjoyed a nice city and formed part of a company with a promising future. I would love to have the opportunity of returning to FMC. But I hope, whatever happens, I will get what it’s most convenient for my future… both my personal and my professional life.

I’m off to Colombia after my presentations and my internship are done. After a short vacation, I will be finishing my second year of the MBA and then it’s back to real life. It’s my last post here, so bye for now!!

Don’t Make Me Cry

MBA, News Corp. Hey all, this is a sad day for me, Roy Hills, and is most likely an even sadder day for you when you learn the news I am about to break. This blog post will be my last for this summer, although I do still have three weeks left in this internship. I will give you a moment to let it soak in and please don’t get all teary eyed. Okay now that we got that out of the way, I wanted to recap how my internship has evolved from my expectations and goals into what it ultimately has become.

Initially, coming into my internship at News Corp, I was told that I would be doing digital sales strategy and most likely working for Fox News. Now digital sales strategy can mean a whole variety of different things. For me, it has meant everything from being tasked to help the sales team to strategize on how to sell advertising space to increasing the efficiency among the sales teams and how they interact with different players and databases within the organization. I have looked at demographic data to determine advantages that Fox News offers over its competitors and highlight potential advertisers to the sales teams. Additionally, I have also looked at different ways to help maximize monetization from advertising of new emerging digital platforms such as mobile. The variety of projects and the constant change of landscape in the digital field is what I have enjoyed the most about working for News Corp.

News Corporation’s philosophy has always been about making money, which is good thing since that is the reason why most companies are in business. This philosophy really carries through to all divisions within the company. With this in mind, I will be looking back at the many trends I have researched within the emerging digital media advertising space and report on my findings. This report will be my “vision” of what the website can do to further increase its future revenue. Oh yeah, I also got “promoted” or more accurately I am just going to be doing the job of three people. I am taking over next week for an employee taking off to Mexico and a retiring intern, in addition to doing my own job. Should be fun! :-) (Yep, that is a smiley face)

IBM's Consulting Model

IBM continues to surprise me: this time with its super-collaborative culture. I see multiple partners working on deals together, bringing business for different groups at the company. They are able to position services throughout the lifecycle of initiatives: starting with strategy setting to implementation to business process outsourcing. In addition, they tap into an enormous range of in-house software products and technologies available to create industry-edge capabilities for clients.

Many projects at IBM have large-scale technology implementation aspects to them. My group – the Strategy & Transformation practice – usually comes in at the beginning of a project to lay out strategic direction, business case, high-level design and transformation planning. I am currently advising the corporate communications team of a global manufacturer in integrating messaging and brand-building across all regions under a global umbrella. I am redesigning the organization, designing processes for content creation and localization, defining governance framework to maintain consistent brand image, and creating strategies to win the hearts and minds of stakeholders. I hate to admit it, but a big part of my work on this project is MO. I’m building upon concepts in that class to deal with real-world challenges. I am very impressed by the detailed transformation methodologies used by IBM, which dive deep into stakeholder management and communication methodologies (remember EIS simulation?).

As you decide which consulting firm to work for, two important factors are location and work-life balance. IBM is extremely flexible in terms of location. You can stay wherever you want as long as you can fly Monday-to-Thursday to your client. That gives you immense flexibility in terms of moving around with your partner. Also, you can work from home on Fridays if there are no events or meetings, which can help offsetting the travel fatigue and balance the work-life equation a little bit.

Amazon: Work Hard, Have Fun, Make History

I can definitely check the first two off the list. Am I making history? Time will tell I guess, but I sure hope so! So my last month at Amazon just began this week. Time really has flown by. I have learned a lot about Amazon through other interns, the frequent speaker series (where Senior VP talk about their teams and careers), and through speaking with Ross alumni at Amazon. It seems that each team has its own sub-culture, but the common theme at Amazon is “casual intensity”.

Intensity: Everyone is very passionate about the customer, their work and their business segment. People work very hard and are very absorbed in their work. People love to get involved in different aspects of the business. For instance, engineers brim with ideas for solving business problems and marketing managers get involved with the technology architecture and bug fixing. I also love the meeting culture here. Meetings longer than 30 minutes are unusual. Attendees focus on the topic at hand and so meetings are very efficient. In fact, efficiency and frugality are also a common theme at Amazon, which contributes to innovation at every step.

Casual: In a nutshell - T-Shirts, Shorts, Sandals, Wii games, and Dogs. The culture at Amazon is very casual. On a sunny day, I often see people play Frisbee or picnic in the parks at work. People come to work in shorts and t-shirts and sandals (and that’s not just on Fridays). Even senior management dresses very casually. We have bi-weekly happy hours at work at the end of Friday that one sub-team puts together. And once in a while we have Happy Hours on other days for no reason except TGIF. There were local brews, dart boards, a Wii game set-up on a big projection screen and a heated discussion about Ninjas vs. Pirates at an impromptu Happy Hour organized by our senior VP just a few days ago. And, I also appreciate how dog friendly the company is. Employees can bring thier dog to work. In fact there is an off-leash dog park on campus, and every reception has a jar of dog cookies. There seems to be one dog for every 6 employees here at Amazon. My floor has gone to the dogs, said a colleague when introduced to two new puppies in the past month.
Here is a hilarious video by Woot, a recent Amazon acquisition that touches upon the company culture:

More Than Halfway Through!

It kinda feels like our HR staffer’s reading this blog. Within about 24 hours of my last post, I started getting staffed on projects with my preferred groups. These were not just ordinary, run-of-the-mill pitches and such - I’m talking about the more sought after live IPO and LBO deals. Now that we’re sort of over the hump of the summer internship, things are starting to gain momentum. The mid-program reviews came up during the week and while there were loads of positives, some of us realized that being strongly opinionated is a useful trait on Wall Street. I was therefore encouraged to demonstrate that I have pretty strong ideas on just about everything.

We had our volunteer day a couple of weeks ago and I went straight to the event from an all-nighter at work. I had a lot of fun as it involved all summer interns in the New York area and caught up with some old friends. The downside was that we were somehow required to return to the office (yes it was a half-day event) and I was running on empty the rest of the day.

While we investment banking interns started out meeting at local Tribeca hot spots, we’ve had to devise new ways of incorporating a social element into our demanding schedules. We now find ourselves ordering and eating dinner together while working late (making believe we're in some swanky restaurant), getting into lively debates on just about any random topic (who happens to be the strongest intern?) or trading oldies and rap tunes at 3:00 AM (anyone remember “Can’t touch this”/MC Hammer?). It might sound a bit sad, but it’s pretty much fun and we’re getting to know each other in a more unstructured manner. On the other hand networking with the full time associates and more senior bankers goes on apace during the day. 2 weeks ago, I had lunch with a very senior banker and found that our paths had crossed at a former client company of mine in Oklahoma - shows how small the world has become.

The last few weeks

The last 10 weeks seem to have flown away. It has been a busy 10 weeks, although I had my fair share of fun activities. The last few weeks are going to be a scramble, to tie up a lot of information processing together into a synchronized deliverable.

I am preparing for a presentation to my entire team in the last week, and that involves a lot of work with meeting the team and getting feedback on my work over the last week. The idea is to build a foundation for your work before you go into your final presentation and building consensus is especially important when working on the strategy team.

Last weekend was a mix of fun and work. On Saturday, four Rossers left early in the morning for Friday Harbor for a whale watching tour. I was blown away by the trip and the experience of being in the middle of the ocean surrounded by a pod of whales was surreal. Sunday however was at work, where I was pulling stuff together for my meetings on Monday. Then again, I was able to fit in breaks from work. Wednesday evening, I went to the IMax in downtown Seattle and was blown away by Inception.
My roommate, who is from Ross and an intern at Microsoft as well had a fantastic experience last week. He was attending the World Partner Conference at Washington DC. It was a fantastic experience where he learnt how crucial partners are for Microsoft’s enterprise offerings, the kind of products partners build on top of Microsoft’s offerings and their expectations from a partner conference. To top it all, he attended a keynote by Bill Clinton.
Speaking of famous speakers, we have had the chance to interact with the CVPs of all of Microsoft’s divisions. Last week is the grand finale, with Steve Ballmer speaking to us. These sessions have been great learning experiences, based on the career experiences of each one of these leaders and hearing about their vision of Microsoft.
This is my last post, and hopefully I will see you all back in AA starting September.

Mid-point at Harley-Davidson

It’s been over 5 weeks at Harley-Davidson, and I can’t believe how fast the time’s gone by. I had a mid-term review this week, which went well (I think!), and I am now revving up for the last leg of my internship.

There are 2 companies in Milwaukee that everyone recognizes and wishes to be a part of – Harley-Davidson and The Miller Brewing Co. The Miller headquarters is just opposite the H-D headquarters, and that’s where we went for the ‘insider’ or ‘hard-hat’ tour of the Miller Brewery. We were taken to the plant, where we saw the bottling and packaging process. The best part of the tour was the free beer, of course, but what made this even better was that we got to go to the employee bar inside the corporate office! Imagine having a bar inside the office, where all employees get absolutely free beer everyday! Apparently even the conference rooms out there have taps! How people ever get any work done, I wonder!

Milwaukee is enclosed by Lake Michigan on one side, and that part of Milwaukee is very popular for its scenic beauty, beaches and jogging treks. The COO of H-D hosted an event for the LDPs (Leadership Development Program) last week at Bradford beach. The COO, Matt Levatich, is an LDP alumnus himself. The LDP program provides many such opportunities where the LDP interns and current incumbents (full-time employees currently undergoing the rotation) get to network with the leadership team. I met a lot of interesting people at the Bradford beach social, and tasted the famous Milwaukee custard.

The Harley-Davidson Foundation works with many non-profit organizations to support the communities in which the company has facilities. We met with Gail Lione, the President of the Foundation, who has been closely associated with the LDP program for many years. The work that the HD Foundation does is phenomenal, and what is especially impressive is how just 4 people manage to accomplish so much. In all companies that I work with, I always look for a strong community involvement, and opportunities for employees to volunteer. I followed up with Gail after the meeting, and volunteered at a local public school to read to young children. I was paired with a 6 year old girl by the name of Shakira, and we spent about 30 minutes reading a story book. She was absolutely adorable, and after the session, she drew a picture of me with lots of hearts around it, and wrote ‘I love you’ and gave me the picture. I now hang the picture proudly at my desk!

Well, as you can see, an internship at Harley-Davidson is a fantastic opportunity to be part of a prominent program, along with the challenges and perks that come with it. I don’t remember the last time I’ve enjoyed working so much, and it promises to get better with a trip to Sturgis planned soon! More details about that, and my attempt at learning to ride in my next blog. Have fun riding!