How a Trading Floor Works

Imagine standing up to a sea of computer monitors and more than 1500 individuals fixated on the at least three screens in front of them. Add to that sales people standing and shouting at traders across the floor, as well as the incessant ringing of phones and never ending chatter of people talking to clients, each other and anyone else. What never fails to amaze the passive observer is the fact that all that activity is driven by a single entity - the market. Its millisecond changes in price and information sends ripples through the trading floor, bringing together activity from all around the country, and even from across the oceans into a single location.

But one has to wonder how all the chaos is controlled and packed into a neat organization, much less a global financial institution. First, consider the seating arrangements on the floor. Space is allocated to individual desks, which have their sales people and traders sit at most an aisle away. These desks deal in their own individual markets, with sales people either getting orders for traders to execute, or moving securities off the traders’ books. Now, consider the synergy available to the investment bank from having the bulk of its trading operations in a single location. Traders and sales people do not confine themselves to their desks; they move around, call, or simply stand up and shout across desks to get the pulse of other markets. These extra bits of information, cheaply and efficiently gathered, allow traders/sales people to form a much better picture of how markets are moving, what they term "color".

Color is the trading floor's edge. Sales people call their clients to update them on market color gotten from traders or other clients. This in turn allows them to get their client's perspective on markets, thus giving them an even clearer picture of the forces driving the markets. This process continues, and the trading floor that gives the best color, thus enabling its clients to make the most money, ultimately takes home the biggest share of the pot.

Fun times in Kansas!

In my last two posts I mainly described all the hard work I've been through to understand the business and ensure my projects add value to the company. Having been with Hill's Pet Nutrition for 5 weeks now, the only thing that haven't changed is the amount of work. What have changed though is the amount of fun!

When I first started I didn't know too many people in the state of Kansas (actually I knew only one from work) so fun wasn't part of my everyday life. It got even worse when I had to deal with flooded roads and storms (picture was taken at 3pm). If you add to that tornado warnings every other day, there you have a whole bad situation in terms of lifestyle.

However, things started to turn around as the HR department had organized some activities for all the interns. Since we are only two MBA interns, it was great to get a chance and meet others from packaging, engineering, procurement etc. After a picnic at Lake Shawnee, which was extremely fun, we all started to hang out and arrange different kind of activities with the best of it being the get-together in my apartment to watch USA against Ghana for the World Cup. If only USA had won our afternoon would have been even better but you can't have it all! To fight the pain from the devastating loss my American counterparts suggested we go for a beer which took me some time to drink. Look at the glass size in the picture...

Overall, the World Cup has dominated, not only discussions but also our time. Being part of a truly global company gave me the opportunity to watch the Greece-Nigeria game with a couple of Nigerians that work for Hill's. Also, based on my initiative, there are several brackets flowing around but so far mine is the most accurate. I guess soccer is not an American sport yet. Good times... Hopefully it will be even better during the second half of my stay...

Strasburg + Obama = Craziness.

Hey everyone!

So the last time I posted, it was my first day—I was nervous, excited, and clueless. Over the past two weeks I have worked possibly one of the most challenging homestands ever and I have been assigned numerous projects. At the first game I was assigned to work, not only was Strasburg pitching, but we also had a surprise guest appearance by President Obama.

Not only did we have to work around secret service, but the stadium was completely sold out—a packed house. During the game, I was assigned to work in the PNC Diamond Club. I had to check people in, make sure everyone had wristbands, and oversee the club to ensure everything was running smoothly. Overall, my first game experience was successful. Since I have started my internship, I have worked at 6 games. This upcoming week we have a 10 game homestand, and I am extremely excited to work at the games.

While the team is away on the road, the office has a very different atmosphere. On game days, people are coming and going; on office days, it is much more relaxed. On non-game days I usually work on projects and attend department meetings. While the team is away, there are a ton of events at the stadium that my department puts together. For example, this week the Lexus Dealers from the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area came out to the field for an organized softball game. Last night, we hosted the 49^th Annual Congressional Baseball Game. It is a 7-inning baseball game, Republicans versus Democrats, with approximately 7,000 people attending, and for charity. Prior to the game, I was responsible for letting in media and sponsors. During the event, I was assigned to manage the Pressbox. It was very calm and low-key in the Pressbox, so I was able to watch most of the game. This was such a cool event to work at.

I have a lot of new projects to work on in the next few weeks. My biggest one coming up is the Dave Matthews Band Concert that is being held at the stadium at the end of July. I look forward to updating everyone on this project! Stay Tuned Everyone, Stay Tuned

Learning and Unlearning

"Are you having fun ? What did you learn ?" the CEO asked, even before I could start my midway presentation.

I'm more than half way through my internship and often during these 7 weeks I have got the urge to do more analytical 'MBA type' stuff. The need to give business issues the form of a well laid out case and then provide an elegant solution. However, in the real world facts have a way of hiding until right after you have made the decision and then in hindsight they are all there. And more than that, although something like a conjoint analysis might be very valuable and look even better on a report, business needs might be more effectively served by a quick calculation delivered with perfect timing.

Even though picturing yourself making that all convincing strategy argument supported by incontestable facts is very satisfying, but almost never achievable in a real business scenario. As I start the last month of my internship I'm convinced the increased comfort with business ambiguity will help me propose more practical solutions to the problems I'm handling.

I would say the most important learning in this internship has been to know better when to keep the MBA in me reined in and let common sense make the call...and yes it has been fun learning that and more. A bit unsettling, but fun none the less.
Finally, as posting on this blog has also been part of the summer experience, I would use this comment to say something about the blogging assignment. When I opted for this exercise at the onset of summer I felt that this may be useful. But now I’m coming round to the view that it may be better to discontinue this exercise from the next year or make some changes at the very least. Blogging is essentially about free sharing of ideas and the less boundaries we put around it the better. Also in my view in its present form this assignment has been a distraction from what students should primarily be concentrating on - which is their internship. It may be minor but it’s a distraction none the less. More important, the internet is much too powerful a medium to waste on saying something just because you have to meet a word limit. Just my two cents… (390 words)

I Do What I Do

MBA, News Corp. Based on all the amazing feedback (some real, but mostly imagined) I have received from my fans (which I am not so sure exist), bloggers and celebrities alike, I feel there is some ambiguity of what the day in life of Roy the intern is like. Let me tell you… I am living the Digital Ad Sales dream. Every week I am assigned to a full time employee to help with sales support, usually filling in for an employee that is out on vacation, given the fact that this is the vacation taking time of year. When filling in I typically create Powerpoint sales presentations, recommend new sales opportunities, research digital sales campaigns and work to help optimize advertising campaigns to ensure the client is receiving the largest bang for its buck. Additionally, I am there to help in whatever capacity the account executive needs me to. These duties of course are in addition to my role of researching emerging digital mediums.

The past two weeks have seen me research a couple interesting new digital opportunities that will become big in the not so distant future. These two advertising opportunities are Google TV and Facebook’s targeted ad serving. Both of the two have the potential to really change the current digital advertising landscape and be cash cows for these respective companies. Facebook’s ad serving to third party websites really is interesting given the amount of information they have on individuals, which is truly a marketers dream.

Finally, since the World Cup has started and I am supposed to watch TV at work, I have spent way too much time following the games. However, I am definitely not alone in this endeavor. The whole office pretty much shuts down during these games. Based on my calculations of the small sample size of what is Floor 22 of the News Corp building, I would have to say that worker productivity is down at least 80% during the World Cup.

Summery Philly Sips

OK, I have to admit it… I really like Philadelphia! And I am very pleased with the location of both my place and my office in Center City. I know it might not the same for everyone, but for me, having an internship in a city is a big plus! When thinking about my personal experience in managing social life as an intern, it is something that surely makes a difference.

The first one in a bunch of events that I have enjoyed, just walking distance from my current area, was the Ross Alumni Reunion. It was refreshing to get together with fellow Rossers and talk about our summer experience so far. It was also good to receive advice from recent (and not so recent) graduates in Philly as well. Afterwards, I discovered that a group of people from my office organized outings every other week to a happy hour, taking advantage of http://centercityphila.org/life/SipsPartic.php. I joined, sharing the mission of the gathering, since I’m also into socializing and strengthening ties with co-workers in different functions and divisions of the company.

And there is also the World Cup! I was very surprised to see that some of the matches were watched in the office or in nearby sport bars and pubs. I didn’t expect to find such a strong enthusiasm with soccer, and yet I found a huge T.V. on a completely blocked street. The fans were outside, watching the game and making noise. It felt a little bit like home. Continuing with the sporting events but not in my neighborhood, I went to see a baseball game. The Phillies made a nice and eventful game that night, with just the perfect summer weather!

The city has great food offering and I’ve been able to go to nice restaurants. I have also gone to the Historic places and the Old City, which was very interesting. I used the Memorial Day long weekend to visit a friend in Boston and I hope to be in NYC for the Independence weekend. And yes, I know that it all happened here, but I miss some of the people I’ll be seeing in New York! I have yet to go to some of the museums Philly has to offer… I’m looking forward to it!!

Week 7 of finance at Sears

I have completed week 7 on my internship and am almost at the last stretch.

I have been making progress with my second big project. I am analyzing financial and marketing data from 2009 and 2010 in the first and second quarters to assess if there has been a significant impact on sales during this period due to shifting the release of new promotions in the circular from Sundays to Fridays. I am comparing sales and promotional markdown data against circular metrics such as page count, length of promotions in days, frequency of promotions in days/week and circulation volume (number of households reached through the circular). I am using graphical trending, segmentation criteria, statistical correlation and regression analysis to determine the strength of relationships between metrics and their ultimate relative impact on sales. So far, I have been making progress with refining my methodology. It remains to be seen if the data will be conclusive enough for me to make strong recommendations for or against current policy.

The project has provided me with plenty of intellectual stimulation, analytical learning opportunities and brainstorming opportunities with my immediate managers and SVP. I am hoping to have made concrete progress on the project by the end of the internship (in 3 weeks), so that it is ready to handover to other staff for follow up analysis on data that comes in through the rest of the year.

I have developed an outline for my final presentation and am working on getting feedback on the first draft this week. I am due to present to the business unit CFO’s in 10 days time, so I have to keep pushing forward on this piece on a regular basis.

I have been attending many internship activities as well; networking with other interns throughout the company at breakfasts and lunches; and attending skills training classes available through an internal educational program called Sears Holdings University. I just attended a Project Management class last week and will be attending one on Pursuing Creativity next week.

This internship has proven to be a well-rounded experience, as the management at Sears really believes in doing everything possible to enhance and retain the human capital they have. Anyone considering an internship at Sears will find themselves in a position where attention is paid to what they want and action is taken to ensure a good experience for the intern.

Great start to NYC summer

New York has always been among the top cities I wanted to live in. It's full of life and color, a tremendous variety of restaurants and the most vibrant art and culture platform that I have seen anywhere. Finally my dream comes true for the summer as I start my internship with IBM. As I absorb my first week of experiencing this fascinating city, I am surprised how quickly it flew by.

My internship at IBM started with a three day onboarding class in Washington D.C. with other MBA interns from Kellogg, Booth, Wharton and Columbia. While the class itself was to familiarize us with the company and the administrative processes, the three days together in D.C. were a great way for the intern batch to bond and build an instant support network in the company.

The first week flew by in a blur as I absorbed training materials and research, and networked with consultants and partners in the Strategy & Transformation practice. The need to network with people cannot be overemphasized in a large consulting organization. Since you do not have a strict reporting heirarchy, finding ways to advance your career is in your own hands. Building a network of peers and mentors can help solve problems on an assignment and help land the engagements you're looking to work on and open opportunities in the company over a longer term.

My project starts in Atlanta next week, and it's expected have a typical Monday through Thursday on-site travel schedule. My work will be focused on organizational alignment and change management at a large multinational corporation. I hope to get exposure to my client's senior leadership and be able to identify additional strategic and operational challenges facing their business. My metric for success in the project would be to creatively solve a significant problem for my client that would result in measurable value to the client. On the weekends, of course, I will be exploring the city and making some good friends.

Full Steam Ahead (MBA, Amazon)

The last two weeks at Amazon have gone by very quickly. I presented my research to 12 technical managers last week and delivered two reports this week. I am certainly kept on my toes and love it. Working with supervisors is interesting, because I have been given so much freedom to run my project. I chat with my manager once or twice a week to bounce my ideas off him. I work closely with two other managers, and I took up a tiny side project for one of them. I also meet weekly with my mentor, who is incredibly helpful when I am stuck on an issue.

My summer project evolved quite a bit in the first two weeks. It was quite exciting to turn a broad business idea and problem into a structured 3-month plan. My MAP project really helped with that. My manager had presented me with a set of projects/issues I could help with, and I thought through them to pick the ones I would work on this Summer. My decision was based on my potential impact on the project, my interests, skills and learning objectives. I communicated these with my manager, and together we came up with a set of goals for me. I broke down those goals into actionable items, and talked to my mentor about what was achievable.

I also learned that setting hard deadlines for myself, and communicating those with the rest of the team helps me focus and push forward on my work. I try to deliver a document every week, so that I time-box myself. Documenting my findings also helps me when a question is asked of me, or when I am trying to drive towards solutions. So it’s a tactic I recommend to everyone. Besides, it improves writing and presentation skills.
Here’s yet another video of Jeff Bezos, this one is more current, from the Princeton graduation:

Week 1 at Harley-Davidson in Milwaukee

My first day at Harley-Davidson began with a bike night. How very fitting! H-D has a bike night every Thursday outside the H-D museum during summer. Bikers from all over Milwaukee, and not just H-D owners, congregate outside the museum to show off their bikes and enjoy some good food and drinks. It is quite an amazing site!

Besides bike night, there’s another reason that summertime in Milwaukee is the best time of the year. It’s also summerfest time! Check out the website at www.summerfest.com. Harley-Davidson sponsors a stage, and on the first day, I got to watch the show from the HD deck, with free food and drinks flowing through the evening. This privilege continues during the 2 weeks of summerfest late in the evening, and it’s a great opportunity to meet other HD enthusiasts.

My project is turning out to be very interesting as well. For a complete motorcycle novice like me, getting to know every part & accessory that H-D sells on its various models is quite a daunting task, but I am learning so much! The sheer passion of the H-D customers and employees is very infectious, which is probably what makes the work culture here so very easy-going and open.

I am especially looking forward to the plant visit to Kansas City next week, where I get to see how HD manufacturers its legendary bikes. In addition, I will be visiting the dealers to understand the sales process. But the most awaited portion of my on-the-ground research is a currently tentative trip to Sturgis for the largest annual motorcycle rally in the US. There’s no better way to get to know HD customers.

Milwaukee is a very beautiful city, and is very European in its building architecture. The German influence is still very visible in the city’s construction, people and culture. And of course, it is known as the ‘drunkest’ city in the US. Policemen cruise around in their special ‘Police’ edition Harley-Davidson bikes, and also on really large horses! Apparently, the easiest way to get a drunk crowd under control is to show up on either of these 2 beasts.

I am learning so many new things not just from a project perspective, but also about the local people, and the American culture. My next update will have more details about my Kansas City visit, and my discussions with H-D dealers. Till then, keep riding!

Thomson Reuters Phase 2

In my 2nd two-week stint as a Strategy intern at Thomson Reuters, I continued to work on competitive intelligence, evaluate growth areas, and explore big picture opportunities for the company. I’ve learned more in the past two weeks about financial services, software, data management, and information systems than I ever wanted to or thought I would learn. But in our weekly intern lecture series, where every Friday an intern presents on a topic of their choice (relevant to Thomson Reuters strategy of course) I decided to follow my interest and talk about media strategy. I’ll be presenting on the topic tomorrow morning, but some of my focal points will be:

- Decline of traditional media and what it means for Thomson Reuters
- Monetization of digital content
- New media devices such as Smartphones and iPads
- New user friendly experience that’s interactive, transparent, customizable
- Thomson Reuters new media initiatives and growth opportunities

This will be my first presentation of the internship, so it will be a golden opportunity to show off those Ross-groomed presenting skills, share my research findings, and make a solid impression on the rest of the strategy team. Like any summer internship, this is a 10-week job interview so it will be important to go above and beyond to showcase my skills.

I’m also continuing my networking by making appointments to meat with executives every week. Not surprisingly, it’s more difficult than it seems. Everyone who I’ve tried to meet with has been booked solid for the last two weeks, but promised to set aside some time next week to meet for a half hour. Knowing how difficult it is to get a hold of these people makes it all the more important that I make the most of my time with them, learn and listen as much as possible while still making an impression. I’ll be meeting with both the Chief Marketing Officer and President of Reuters Media next week, so I’ll be sure to prepare some good questions. I always believe that you never know what connection will help you when you need it most, so I strongly value these meetings as a networking tool and sort of “audition”.

Go USA!

Alex Weiss

Last Weeks at Fox

(BBA, Fox Broadcasting)

Hey, it's Alyssa Fried, and this is a sad post for me. I only have one week left as an intern at Fox. Although my internship was short, about only six or seven weeks in length, I learned more working for Fox Broadcasting than I have at any other job that I have held in the past.

This week I traveled to a local ad agency with interns who work for Fox Cable. Tuesday we learned about media buying and today (Wednesday) we learned about media planning. Both were extremely interesting, but I was most intrigued by the presentation on media buying. The buyer who was presenting discussed his company's strategies and what they expect from the cable networks that they are buying spots from. This was so interesting to me because this was the other side of all the deals I had been watching my supervisors make in the past weeks. It was great to see both sides of the deal and really understand what each side wants. I think it is beneficial to know what each side is looking for because both the advertiser and the cable network want very specific thing for their company. To have a greater understanding of both sides would be very beneficial for everyone.

I am now very interested in these aspects of business. As I discussed with my supervisor today, this can be an 'exciting' side to finance because it deals with television and entertainment. Not only do you have to be able to create extremely detailed excel spreadsheets with various calculations, but you also have to be very familiar with the television shows that you are selling commercial spots for. You have to know who is watching them, and what types of products should be advertised in the commercial breaks during these shows.

This week I also learned a lot about what sort of information Nielsen sends out, and how this information is important for Fox Broadcasting. What many people don't realize is that there is a lot that goes on behind deciding what commercials should be broadcast in each television show, and where they should be placed.

What I have observed about Fox Broadcasting is that although there are many divisions on my floor, and even parts of our division that are located in Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles, everyone is connected. Everyone works together between divisions to make successful deals for the company and the clients. People from the sales department go to the research department and the sales planning department, and the revenue analysis department and then go to the finance department in Los Angeles, and then it all comes back around. It seems seamless. Everyone has their individual job and part in putting on television what the consumer wants to see and potentially, buy.

This is an industry and a company that I can see myself working for in the future, and I am sad to see my internship end.

First Week at Apple!

Hello All. It has been long since I first posted. Now I am at Infinite Loop 1 Cupertino, the place where Apple is. (See Picture 1)

Life at Apple is much more excited than I expected and I learn a lot everyday. All the people here seems to be very busy, but they are very open and cooperative. You can also see some people with strong characteristic. People who don't wear shoes, man wearing a skirt, people with long beard and so on. I can see that Apple is the company with the most creative and passionate people at Silicon Valley, leading technological innovation and lifestyle of future world.

Since this is the first blog, I will start with some introduction and things I felt at Apple.

(1) Where Apple is located. How it is like in Cupertino.

As I said, 1 Infinite Loop is where Apple is located. I-Phone users! Did you know that the icon of Maps designates Apple's location? I guess many of you didn't know about this.

The weather in Cupertino is the best in US. I heard that during May~December it doesn't rain. I think I am really lucky to have a chance to experience my internship in this environment.

To summarize, I am in such a good place!



(2) I saw Steve! Lot's of people at Valley Fair Store now for getting I-Phone 4!

At my first day, I was having lunch at the CafeMac. There I saw Steve! He was standing just in front of me to get some food, wearing the same clothes such as black turtle neck and jeans.

Tomorrow, people are going to get their pre-ordered I-Phone 4. Some of the interns including my roommate are going to get them. In the left is the picture one of the intern took today. Since Apple's security is very tight, I cannot explain in detail, but I-Phone 4 is a great product. I had a chance to look at it during my one-on-one introduction meeting. You should also try to get one!




(3) Projects going on. Intern events. Ross Bay Area alumni club.

As I said at my first blog, I am working in an operations department. I have several projects to finish for this summer, and am in process of narrowing down the scope of project with my boss. Unfortunately, this is all I can tell you about the project. APPLE'S SECURITY IS THE BEST. ALSO APPLE'S OPERATIONS IS BY FAR THE BEST. (Actually, I heard that Apple was selected the best company for operations)

I see that there are about 50 MBA interns here this summer. Interns are from a variety of schools, but mostly Top 10 + West-Coast based schools. Apple hosts many events for intern such as Happy Hour, Welcome Dinner(This is going on now!), San Francisco trip, Winery trip and so on. So I can enjoy my work but also enjoy gathering with other interns and finding out new things here.

I also have a Ross Bay Area event tomorrow. I will definitely participate and meet our alumni working at the Bay Area.

This seems to be all for today. I hope I can give you more exciting stories with some exciting pictures!

It's been a week and I'm still alive : )

First of all, I need to clarify my blog topic switch. My internship journey for social venture capital didn't work out well, so I decided to work for Samsung Electronics. Currently, I'm a part of a strategy team in a semiconductor division. I'm really sorry for the late notice.

Well, it's been a week since my internship got started. Time does fly by~ First three-day of internship was orientation, and I want to share what I have been learning so far.

1. Samsung's super tight security; worse than U.S. airport

I have never been in a place where I have to seal up my MP-3 player in a plastic bag, cover my cellphone camera lense with a small sticker, get a security tag on my bags, and double check my enterance permit. It was worse than U.S. airport. All these are for preventing information leak against Samsung product/strategy. Do I have to do this every morning during next 8 weeks??!! Sigh...

2. MBA interns from all over the world

There are about 30 MBA interns from Spain, Italy, Romania, England, China, India, and U.S.A. And thay are all crazy about the World Cup!!! I just realized how English is not patient only in soccer. Especially, when US tied with England, you should have seen the face of my colleague from England.

3. Cultural norms in Korea according to orientation.

I want to share some of Korean norms, which were written in a orientation material. I think these are funny.
-'One of the ways of developing mutual trust and cementing a personnel relationship is the practice of getting closer through sharing alcohol...'
-'How to get out of the drink-to-get-drunk-as-fast-as-possible: Keep your glass half full - never let it be seen to be empty or someone will feel obligated to refill it.'
-'There is no such thing as Dutch treat in Korea. Only one person will pay the bill when two or more people go out.'
-'Try to be aware of subtleties in communication, observing non-verbal and indirect cues that often suggest the true sense of what is being communicated.'
Tough, aren't they? If you want to visit Korea, never forget these norms : )

Next time, I'll share about my internship life.

See ya!!

Season 3: Beyond work

(MBA, Eli Lilly) Beyond daily work, we have world cup. :D

The world cup is definitely a popular topic in Lilly. When you have a talk with Lilly employees, it is easy to open the conversation by starting to discuss on how USA team can beat the rivalry teams.

Besides daily work, Lilly HR encourages us to reach out people from different departments. I usually schedule two meetings with different people in the same day and learn their daily job and department. I think it is a great opportunity for me to go outside my silo and understand what is going on in every corner of the corporate. Talking to 30 people during the internship is my goal. During these meetings, I find most people from Lilly are easy to approach and willing to share their experiences and offer advice. The most benefit from networking with them is to open your eyes to their worlds, for example, you can appreciate what is their urgency now, what is the challenge they are facing, what keeps them staying with Lilly for over 30 years, so on and so on.

I often invite people to go lunch together or grab a coffee in the afternoon. Especially, on Friday, that tactics works much better. People are more than happy to meet you and talk more on Friday. In addition, Lilly also organizes many intern events to broaden our networking with senior leaders. During these events, you will have opportunity to talk to the executive vice presents and listen to their unique experiences with Lilly. This gives us more flavors about the life in Lilly.

The daily workload is a bit heavy for my project because this project is tied to a bigger urgent project conducting by the team. The typical day is like this: 6:30am get up. 6:40am breakfast and read WSJ news on iphone. 7:30am drive to Lilly Corporate Center. 8am check and answer yesterday’s emails and set up today’s to do list. 9am-12am focus on project taks. 12am-1pm, go lunch with some interns or with Lilly colleages. Stir fried pasta and Taco salad are my favorite. 1-2pm back to back meet and talk with people from different departments. 3-6pm continue to work on the projects and attend related business meetings.

The project is close to the end, and hopefully I can add some value to the team by coming up with new solutions to their current issues.

Working for the "other"

Summer internship has started and I see myself working for the other: other country, other industry, other coast, and other business.

My internship experience starts 2.400 mi from Seattle. I decided to take the opportunity to get to know US a little bit better and I chose to drive from Ann Arbor to Seattle.

RoadTrip Stats:

Duration: 6 days;

Distance: 2650 mi;

Consumption: 125 gal of gas;

States visited: 9;

Pictures taken: 7940

View Larger Map

Yes, this country is really huge and driving all the way to Seattle prepared me to the changes to come. I've seen beautiful landscapes changing from the absence of hills in Michigan to the absence of pretty much everything Wyoming; from the cosmopolitan Chicago to the far-west little cities on the way to Yellowstone national park; from 85F at Ann Arbor to a snow storm 10000ft above see level at the top of Wyoming Creek; and obviously... people were changing too. But that was just the beginning.

Working in US is considerably different than working in South America. Americans tend to be much more focused on their work than I was used to. In Brazil it is not uncommon to have little “social breaks” during the workday. I would not say it is a complete waist of time. It is during those breaks, with the excuse to have a coffee that a lot of social interaction happens and you end up getting to know your coworker better. Ultimately, a lot is accomplished because the social networks formed this way are a very powerful shortcut to the natural processes. It is also not natural for me to see most of the people having lunch at their desks. I guess that Latinos tend to value the lunchtime much more. The counterpart is that one is actually able to manage the work-life balance much better.

Coming back to the industry after 2 years working as a consultant has been very interesting. I am adapting myself to once more navigate within an organization. The biggest challenge here is to work bottom-up rather than top-down. As a consultant you can move much quicker past the obstacles just because you have the sponsorship of a VP or a CXO. On the other hand, as an MBA intern you are typically on the bottom of the pyramid and you have to exercise negotiation and influence skills much more. Probably, the most noticeable difference between consulting and Amazon is that the first targets the short term profit and the later long term free cash flow.

Finally, I’m working on the “other” business: at least according to the Amazon’s annual financial report. I’m working for a group within Amazon that probably shares only the name and the culture. AWS is a cloud-computing provider and as such has a completely different business model than the e-retail. It grows even faster than Amazon and is a very dynamic environment. The “not so good” side of it is that I’m really far from Amazon’s core business.

Hey everyone,

I am now in the process of completing my third week at Thomas Weisel. In between settling in NYC, learning about corporate culture, and finding a way to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, these past few weeks have definitely been an adjustment.

I have learned a great deal from my work thus far. I work closely with an Equity Research Analyst, along with his Associate, collaborating on research each day. I am initiating coverage on a company this summer, which is pretty exciting because I believe it will leave me with the most comprehensive experience of what a career in Equity Research really entails.

Sitting in an office has proved to be more tiring than expected. However, I have a sense of productivity that I haven't felt in a while. I have found it really is rewarding to walk out of the office at the end of the day knowing that I have challenged myself in a new way.

I have gained a couple of intangibles as a result of small mishaps that I would have never expected to face when entering my internship. For example, not bringing a notepad and pen into a meeting with your boss is pretty silly to think about but gives a poor representation of overall preparedness and interest. Again, not an issue I could have ever foreseen leading up to my summer internship.

For the next couple weeks, I will be working to complete my first initiation, and will keep my experience posted along the way.

-Alex

Seattle - week 5

The last time I blogged, I was still figuring out my project. Well since then, I have finished one of my projects (after spending a few 14 hour days), made presentations and started working on my other projects. Online advertising is an ever evolving field, with new technologies evolving rapidly (compare it to offline advertising, which has been in steady state for decades!) and the strategy group provided a great experience to get an overall view of the business in a few weeks.

Online advertising can be separated into Display advertising and Search advertising. The display advertising space is insanely complex. The current value chain is summarized here http://www.adexchanger.com/pdf/Display-Advertising-Technology-Landscape-2010-05-03.pdf. Being in the strategy group involves thinking through how each segment of the value chain is evolving, and which segments will be able to maintain their margins while other segments might get commoditized. The image above also gives a great idea of the main players in the field.

Search advertising is much more organized. Advertisers primarily bid on keywords in an auction, and the winning advertiser is chosen based on his bid price and the historical probability of the ad being clicked. Its fascinating how such a simple idea is leading to billions of dollars in revenue for Google.

At Seattle, we probably have one of the largest MBA intern communities (between Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing) and the fact that all of us stay in the same apartment complex doesnt hurt. We had a bar crawl before heading to a Mariners game last weekend, which was a lot of fun. What made it special was a few Rossers flew from around the country for the weekend! World cup matches on weekends is becoming a routine, as are boardgames nights and dinners on weekdays.

I am looking forward to the next 7 weeks and hopefully will have interesting stories to tell in my next post. Until then..

Socializing in Columbus

Hello fellow readers,

So this is it, my third posting on this blog. So far I have told you about the work, the city (town?, community?) where I live and so other interesting topics… but what's about with the social life when you are an intern?.

Let me say that probably mine is not the most interesting experience in this field, but I'll give it a try. As you may recall I'm doing my internship in a city called Columbus, Indiana. Is a small city (village?) with little to do. Thanks to that, managing your social life become extremely important, you need to organize things with the other interns, do some networking to meet people you can hang out with, etc. Something that has been really useful is that Arjun (another intern from Ross) took the role of a Social Coordinator and frequently organizes card nights, happy hours, trips to watch World Cup games at our local BW3 and things like that. Leveraging this "Social Coordinator" role has proven very successful as slowly (but steady) we have been increasing the number of people participating in all this activities thus relying less on what the city have to offer to the individual.

So probably you are wondering how a typical day looks like? Well I arrive to the office at 8am, check my e-mail, go to a couple of meetings, have lunch, do some slides and around 4 or 5 I'll receive a mail from our Social Coordinator, or someone else, proposing to do something in the evening. So around 5:30 or 6:00pm I would leave the office and go to play badminton, bowling, watch a movie or do something else. In the weekend we have organized events like paintball, trip to Indy 500, going to a food festival at Bloomington an things like that. Thanks to all this organization effort and willingness to proactively look for other people and activity ideas have made my summer internship an interesting experience filled with a lot of activities that I usually wouldn't do while living in a bigger city.

So let's see what happen in the following weeks, we are planning on going to a County Fair (which would be a first time for me), play more badminton, and I'll probably will take my car to the track for a good day of racing (which I haven't done in several years). I'll let you know how this is going.

Investment Banking Week 1

It's been a week since my internship started at CS. Although I've not been given any actual work, I can feel it is going to be a busy summer. We're constantly warned about the hours, and I can see analysts treating the office as their home.

Part of training has been a series of speakers advising us on a multitude of job-related topics ranging from dignity at work to do's and don'ts for the summer. We're bombarded with all kinds of well-meaning exhortations, solicited or otherwise, including:

- Any time you have to leave your desk for an extended period of time, inform somebody (even if it is for 20 minutes).
- Ask a lot of questions. Ask a lot of questions. Ask a lot of questions.
- The only reason we're in this business is to do deals. Don't forget that.
- The most important thing is your attitude.
- The return offer is yours to lose.
- (My fave) Don't whine. If your boss gives you work at 4 pm on a Friday, don't go 'but I had plans...' Unless you have a wedding or a funeral, you don't have plans.

There's so much to learn and absorb, that even though we've had 5 days of training I don't feel prepared for what will be expected of me. However, in my short 5 working days I have already gotten a taste of the IB lifestyle. On Wednesday I was supposed to meet some friends in NYC for dinner. However, we were given homework that day and all had to stay past 11pm to complete it. I canceled on my friends. I have long known that in investment banking your time is not really yours, but this was the first time I experienced it. I guess I will stop making plans for the next 8 weeks.

What has most impressed me throughout the training process so far is the rousing speeches given by senior bankers. They all have a genuine passion for the business and the company, and have keen insight on their respective industries. I hope to find my passion too, and one day be able to call something I'm passionate about my career.

Dell - defining a project - and Austin - Blues central.

I'm 3 weeks into my internship. I was essentially given a list of names and was told : "go and talk to these people. Tell me what you think about the business."

The list had 25 names of people. These people had - possibly - 50 opinions. I wrote them all down. I brainstormed. I oohed. I ahhed. I wrote more stuff down. The 25 people suggested 25 more people I should talk to. Pretty soon I was living in other people's cubes.

I ran an IV line from Starbucks into my bloodstream.

At the end of the process - I think I have something that vaguely resembles a project proposal. I hope to finalize it in the beginning of next week and start working. I hope that my project's useful. A lot is riding on the recommendations. It seems like the project they assigned to me is actually going to be utilized as soon as possible - it gave me a sense of urgency I did not expect.

I do want to discuss two other things: One is Blues - Austin is known for it's very well developed blues music scene. I have decided to take advantage of that and use some of my spare time to relearn the guitar and harmonica. If you like music - seek employment with Dell.

The other is the experience of working in a large company that has so many MBA interns: It's pretty cool - a lot of likeminded people who are here in Austin as well - in a strange town. We end up socializing a lot and doing a lot of activities. For instance, today I went hiking in a park, and tomorrow I will go tubing. This despite the insane triple digit weather in the summers here.

If you have two opportunities for an internship - all other things being equal - pick the one where they have more interns. You'd have far more fun. So far we've gone out to concerts, boat trips, dinners, and more. An internship is more than the chance of getting a full time job; it's even more than the opportunity to learn new things you have not been exposed to before. And yet even more than a time to expand your professional network. It's a great time to make new friends.

Life from a consultant point of view

(MBA,Booz) Five weeks had passed by very fast and I am slowly getting used to the consultant tempo, it starts Monday morning with an early flight to the project location, then a taxi to the hotel, check in and straight to the team room where I literally spend most of my day. Each team has its own rules; in my case we have a daily team meeting 6:30 PM before we call it a day, though there is always something else to do, so most of the time we don’t leave before 7:30 PM. When we do call it a day, we go to the hotel, drop the computer bag and go out to grab dinner so it’s not until around 9-9:30 PM that I arrive to my room to take a shower , once a week we have a team dinner so we arrive to our room even later. The morning usually starts around 9 AM – but it depends on the customer – in our case this is an early one and so is our wakeup call – 7:30 we are already on site working. On Thursday the team returns home – or to be more precise – each team member flies to his home which might be anywhere in the US, so it’s a shorter day that might end as early as 4:30 though I usually fly out around 7:30, it gives more time to accomplish tasks and airport security lines are much shorter at that time.

Friday is a home office day – it is an easier day 9-5 basically and there’s always something fun happening in the office - for the past two weeks we had World Cup games screening accompanied with breakfast!

I must admit I enjoy this routine and feel very good with the consultant way of life, even after I had to spend 1.5 hours in a shaking plane that tried to land 5 times before succeeding because of bad weather, I guess it might change after few years but so far so good!

Consulting - Week 1. Check!

Phew - week 1 of my consulting internship at Booz & Co. is almost over, and I can already feel the heat of the fast paced consulting career! My first week was very similar to what the other Ross-er at Booz has experienced - drinking from a fire hose. Think first week of RLI - on steroids.

The first day involved the "logistics" - laptop, paperwork, welcome presentation and address, etc. The second day onwards, "the game" was on! By "the game", I mean a training simulation where we are all assigned to teams and have to work together on a client engagement. Our engagement working sessions were peppered with training sessions for Excel, Powerpoint, Company culture and policy, etc. "The game" ended with the teams presenting and the team coaches giving each of us feedback. My, how much we all had to learn! The final day involved Booz's version of the follies. Given the high quality of the skits that were put up with less than 45 mins of preparation time, I strongly believe that most people in my class would do wonderfully in the entertainment industry! And oh, did I mention that we all ended every night with copious amounts of alcohol in our systems? Good times.

Today is my first day at my home office - Chicago. I have received my project assignment and couldn't have asked for anything better! I strongly believe that I will get a chance to apply concepts learnt from multiple classes at Ross. My client is based in New Jersey, which is also awesome, because my wife is in New York, and this makes things a whole lot easier! So right now, I have received a couple of project documents and am busy poring over them to make sure that I show up on the client side with an informed view of the current situation. I expect to be challenged significantly - both in terms of analytical skills and organizational skills. Do not underestimate the latter. The number of things that have to be managed, in addition to your regular work, is fairly daunting - timesheets, learning sessions, conference calls, mentor meetings, office luncheons - the list is seemingly endless! But this is exactly what I signed up for, and I am eagerly looking forward to the next 8 weeks of the internship.

And oh yes, before I forget: Viva Argentina!

New City, New Life

Michael Wieder, BBA 2011, Octagon

Last week was a very busy week for me, I took the LSAT Monday, moved to Washington D.C. on Tuesday, and started work at Octagon on Wednesday. My hectic life just made it harder to get adjusted to living in a new city. Unlike a lot of people, I have an advantage adjusting to city life because I grew up and live in New York. However, it always takes time to get acquainted with a new place. The people, culture, food, and layout are all different and take time to adjust too.

I have found that there are ways to alleviate the stress and potential frustration cause by relocation. The first tip is, do RESEARCH. Going on the internet and searching everything from food to maps, and entertainment to transportation can make all the difference on how easy it is to adjust to a new city. At first I found it very difficult to get adjusted to how DC was layed out. I found it hard to navigate the city, and although cleaner than NYC subways, the DC Metro is just inferior to other mass transit systems in cities like NY, London, and Paris. After I looked at a couple maps I was perfectly acclimated to my new city.

My second tip to adjusting to a new city is to EXPLORE. Get out and see what the town, city, or state has to offer. If you hide you will never know how great (or not so great) the new city is. By exploring you open yourself up to new things, and really get a chance to adjust yourself to your new surroundings.

Lastly, make sure that you have FUN. Don't hold back at all. See what the nightlife has to offer, meet new people, go to cultural places. Without having fun, your transition to a new place won't be the same. I have found that if I let myself have fun in a new city I automatically adjust to my surroundings better, because although I may be a foreigner, I feel like a native.

Hope this helps with everyone adjusting to new cities because it has definitely helped me in the past.

First Two Weeks at UBS

Tomorrow (Friday 18 June) will officially mark the end of my first two weeks as an intern at UBS. As a sales and trading intern, I'm based out of Stamford, Connecticut.

Having decided to spend my summer living in Stamford rather than commuting from NYC ( a close 45 min train ride away), I've started to get a real feel for the city. It's in a lot of ways a classic New England town with old architecture and a certain sense of coziness and homely charm, but at the same time sophisticated in its targeted development towards becoming a thriving hub of corporate activity. The city is home to corporate bigwigs such as General Electric, Thomson Reuters, UBS, RBS and World Wrestling Entertainment. The corporates, with their shiny and modern offices, stand against the backdrop of smaller brick buildings housing local businesses, restaurants and small offices - an eclectic mix of the old and the new, of progress and old world charm.

Now, to work proper. The first week was spent in orientation and training, with standard 9-5 hours. Nothing too unusual here, just the standard networking events, icebreakers and lectures covering basic finance/econ classes. The second week saw interns start working on trading desks; Matched Principal Trading for me. For those unfamiliar with the term or the often confusing nomenclature of finance, matched prinicpal trading is in the business of pairing buyers and sellers of securities (corporate bonds mostly, in this case). As this is a new desk, I get to be involved in a lot of business development work. For instance, in the first three days I performed an analysis of customer order flow throughout the trading day to get a gauge of the available liquidity (or the number of buyers and sellers and the amount they want to transact in) offered on our platform.

My program consists of three rotations across three different desks, and I have two more weeks left with MPT. The nature of the work is similar to that of a startup and thus has a clearly defined purpose, which gives me the opportunity to make myself useful to some degree - more than an intern can ask for.

Welcome Breakfast Anyone?

Since the last time I wrote, not much has changed except that I’ve been promoted to Senior MBA Intern. Really! Well, it’s not a promotion, just a comment I heard. I am now the “old intern” because the “new intern” arrived this week. He’s really nice and deserved a warm welcome. The truth is that I still feel as a newcomer, but I realize that in fact I am on my fourth week already!

On Monday we had a very nice Welcome Breakfast and everyone in our floor was invited. The gathering had a good attendance ratio and the usual friendly atmosphere. After my manager introduced us and we raised our hands for everyone else to see, conversation revolved around the morning’s food, our projects and the latest sporting events. It was a good opportunity to get to know some people that I had seen around and to meet others that I had never seen.

I enjoy social interactions and celebrations around food. Maybe that is why I am still getting used to seeing how popular is to eat a sandwich, a frozen dinner or a salad in front of the computer for lunch. I believe it is a cultural difference because my working experience was limited to a Latin American environment, where the habit of making a break and socializing during lunch is more predominant.

Another cultural trait I’ve found is an open-door policy. I would say is something particular to FMC. I’m very pleased to have the opportunity to have such an easy access to different people, from all functions and without distinction. It is impressive to see how fast the response to an information request is, sometimes with even more data that what I had in mind when asking questions.

My manager’s style is something else that I appreciate a lot. He’s very entrepreneurial and knowledgeable, so I find a lot of room to freely create. For each one of my three projects I have one sponsor as well. It will be interesting to balance diverse and sometimes opposing interests, opinions and guidance tips from the ones that are helping me along the way. Wish me luck!!

First Quarter Done!

Hey everybody from the full-of-tornado-warnings Kansas!

I am officially done with my first 3 weeks at Hill's Pet Nutrition and I must admit they went by pretty fast. Several meetings, cross-functional teamwork, research, insight analysis, and number-crunching is the story of my first quarter. My project list keeps getting longer and the day-to-day tasks make things more hectic but no complaints. By the way, keep in mind that all the unpredictable and urgent tasks always end up on the intern's desk!

Basically, the last couple of weeks I spend the majority of my time working in Excel, pulling up shipment and consumption data from different retailers and trying to identify the implications moving forward. This is called the Colgate Business Planning which essentially is a tool to keep track of where the company stands on a monthly basis and figuring out ways to counter possible drawbacks or unexpected downfalls. It may sound like a heavy process but I was glad to be part of it because one of my goals for the summer was to gain exposure to this type of data in order to enhance my analytical and decision-making skills.

Apart from the planning process, I also spent time on the core of my project which is to develop promotional strategies for different lines of products including online, in-store and misc. The fact that it needs to be customized by retail environment and product makes the need for insights greater which is why I've been going over several studies. Currently, I am leading the development of in-store signage and displays based on some ideas I had working with people from supply chain, sales, and packaging engineering which is a great experience.

Overall, my colleagues are more than willing to help me and answer all the "stupid" questions a newbie has. The HR dept has arranged several activities like teleconferencing with parent company Colgate and lunch with all the VPs but the most fun will be this Friday at the picnic all the interns have with the managers and coworkers at Shawnee Lake. It is another advantage of the summer hours at Colgate (Friday is a half workday)...

Take care!

Top of the First Inning: Day 1 with the Nationals

(BBA, The Washington Nationals Baseball Club)

Hey Everyone! So today is the first day of my internship with the Washington Nationals.

I had to come into the office at 9:30 AM. I got to experience my first real commute into Washington D.C. via the metro. Due to a little bit of nerves but mostly excitement, my sleep schedule was completely off, and finally at 6:30 AM I thought it was acceptable to get out of bed. I take the metro into D.C. a lot for sports games, concerts, or just to go into the city, so I’m extremely comfortable on the Red Line. However, to get to Nationals Park I have to take the Red Line and then switch to the Green Line in Chinatown. That was quiet an experience. The metro was PACKED and trying to squeeze out at my stop was a challenge in itself. But I did it! After getting on the Green Line and getting off at Navy Yard I walked about 3 steps outside and there was Nationals Stadium. I was surprised how easy it was to get there.

Mission One: getting to the stadium, CHECK.

Once I got to the Media Gate Entrance at the stadium, another intern was there to let me in. After filling out some paperwork and receiving my credentials I was taken to meet my supervisor, Heather. She seems like a fun person to work with for the next two months. She briefly explained to me the role of the division, but then it was straight to work: my first meeting!

Mission Two: meeting my supervisor and already doing work, CHECK.

Working in the Ballpark Enterprise Department, I get to work at all of the game-day and non-game-day events. Just this week (Wednesday-Tuesday, ya I was surprised about their definition of a week too) I’ll be working at 5 baseball games! After receiving my schedule, Heather showed me to my cubical. My cubicle is probably twice the size of those on the fourth floor of Kresge, and is well decorated with Nationals stuff EVERYWHERE. Not bad, not bad at all.

After getting adjusted, Heather thought it would be beneficial for me to take a tour of the stadium. Side Note: the tour of the stadium is one of the best tours in D.C., so if you’re in the area you should definitely check it out! After the tour, I was free to leave for the day.

Mission Three: surviving day one, CHECK.

Overall, I’d say this was a successful first day. I look forward to updating everyone on my experience over the next 8 weeks. Who knows, maybe ill even get to meet Strasburg!

Fox Broadcasting and Networking

(BBA, Fox Broadcasting)

Hey! It's Alyssa Fried again! After working at Fox, my social life has changed. Usually during the summer I would spend my nights with my friends, until I went to camp at the end of June for two months. Now I am home the entire summer for the first time since I was 9 years old, and when I arrive home at 6:30/7 at night, all I want to do is go to sleep! I know this means I am working hard, and I am enjoying it. I would have to say that if I had to choose my old social life during the summer, or my internship at Fox, I would pick working at Fox. This is because I still have the weekends when I can see my friends and at least twice a week I use my lunch break to meet up with friends who are interns in New York City as well.

While working here, I have met so many people. There are so many different departments on my floor, and I have met most of the people in the various departments. After all this time, I can finally say that I feel like a true part of this office. Everyone is eager to show me their work, and the 'tricks of the trade.' They have started coming to me to request that I work on projects instead of me having to search for work all of the time. It feels great to be contributing to my department. Just the other day, I met someone new and shadowed him for the afternoon. When it was time for me to leave for the day, he handed me his card and told me it was for when I graduate, in case I have any questions, and also to have another contact at Fox. It felt great to be networking in the office.

Although I have only been here for about a month, it feels like I have worked here forever. I now have a routine that I follow every day. I get into the office in the morning, put my lunch in the fridge, and get my laptop from my supervisor. I plug it in, start it up, and travel down the hall to greet everyone and see who needs me to do work. At around 12:30/1:00 after I have finished whatever project I have been working on, I take a lunch break. Sometimes I just walk around the streets exploring, and other times I sit outside my office in the sun because it is so cold in my office. The rest of the day goes pretty quickly after that. I'm busy with projects or sitting in meetings observing, and before I know it, it's 5:00 and it's time to catch the 5:27 train home.

The workload varies from day to day. Mondays are generally the busiest day and I spend most of the morning entering demo estimates into the computer. The rest of the day is usually spent doing analysis of reports from previous, present, and future years. I usually make about three spreadsheets in Excel each day. After my last post, I have grown a lot more confident in my work and have cut down my constant checking significantly!

Lately, I have begun to sit in on meetings to learn about how the sales people communicate with the advertisers, and how deals are formed. In this way, I am finally beginning to see the marketing side of this internship. There is an intern program in another department in Fox Broadcasting and next week I will be traveling to an ad agency with them to learn about media planning and buying. That should be interesting because I haven't been able to interact with interns my age at Fox as I am the only one in my department. I am excited and a little nervous. I look forward to telling you about it!

Half way mark and lots of talk

As I write this I realize that for a small 20 person company I have done an inordinate amount of talking and writing in the past 5 weeks. Between presentations, phone calls, spreadsheets and emails I must have surely broken my previous record for 5 week word wizardry (posts to this blog count too). And what makes it even more remarkable is the fact that this has been done under a veritable oath of secrecy where you are not supposed to talk about the real thing-the company's technology.

All this writing, talking, spreadsheet trickery and industry report browsing has resulted in huge amount of data. Almost six weeks gone and with the deadline for mid way presentation looming large, I'm at a point where all the data better make some sense. Guess it is high time for some real MBA magic. I better take out all the P's and C's to throw at the data. And muster all the forces that Porter has vested in me to whip this data into shape, for not much time is left.

One thing that I learned from the experience so far is a fair amount of time spent in scoping out the project in the beginning can be the most important factor in how successfully you can execute the assignment. So, although the pressure to show results and please immediately is high in an internship, but spending some time to define the project well might be a good idea.

There is lots of information to organize and models to develop, but there definitely is more clarity now about things that looked impossibly vague at the onset. And although it’s fun to joke about Ps and Cs, quite a bit of that understanding is due to those little lessons from marketing or operations or accounting- the bits that cling to some corner of your mind even after everything else in the class is long forgotten.
I’m reasonably sure that the strategy that will come out of this project will be logical. Is it going to be business class case worthy? Well... that is a different matter.
(359 words)

Getting Into The Swing of Things

MBA, News Corp. So I, Roy Elmer Hills IV, am settling into my role here at Fox News Digital and have started to figure out what this summer is going to be like… which is a spectacular development. While most all of the other Fox interns are out and about being investigative journalists, I spend my time sitting at my desk surfing the web and keeping up with the Kardashians and the latest trends in emerging media platforms. I think I am getting paler by the minute, but if you have been in New York in the summer you know that it is no picnic getting a tan either. Basically, I read a lot of white papers, tech blogs and scrutinize every word spoken by Steve Jobs, which given that last week was Apple’s DevCon meant that there was actually a lot to do. I am essentially more or less a consultant, for lack of a better term, to the digital ad sales team on how better to optimize and grow advertising revenue on their emerging media platforms, such as mobile, iPads, Facebook aps, Twitter [well you get the gist].

This rare autonomy as an intern gives me lots of time to ponder important questions, such as the meaning of life and will Lindsay Lohan go to jail. I am also a big high-five giver in the office and am great at distracting others with my thoughts on the latest Taco Bell commercial featuring Charles Barkley. However, in between my moments of distraction glory, I deviate from my ways and make myself useful in helping others in a sales support role, which believe it or not takes up a fair amount of my time.

Well if you are inclined, PLEASE post COMMENTS people so I know that I am not writing this to just pass the time until football season. Additionally, if you are reading this blog from your iPhone, Blackberry or any of the other smartphones, be sure to check out foxnews.mobi.

So it begins!

I found out I couldn’t sleep well at night on Sunday. In my excitement at commencing the first day of the summer internship program, I fell out of bed at about 6:00 AM (after turning in at around 1:30 AM) and proceeded to get ready for the day. Prior to this I’d developed some pet peeves with the on-boarding process, the biggest one being that I’d had to complete seemingly identical forms, in different media (i.e. online and print) and at different points in time. However my frustrations were ameliorated by the fact that the HR reps are super nice.

The first day of orientation began with a general breakfast for all MBA Interns after which we broke out into different rooms for the training. The first day of training turned out to be a bit anti-climactic as our day ended at about 5:30 PM – not quite in line with the long hours of work and intensely cerebral debates we’d all come to expect, though it’s a safe bet that the intensity would rise exponentially over the next day or so. We ended the work day with trips to our permanent desks and my impression of Citi as an atypically friendly investment bank was reinforced when so many different people stopped by our cubes to talk to us and offered to help answer any questions or make us comfortable. I hope this feeling/impression lasts throughout the summer (knocking on wood).

From the summer schedule, we learnt that we’d each be assigned individual research projects to be presented at the end of the summer (we’re yet to know what these are). We also have tons of “Speaker Series” sessions with key officers including Vikram Pandit, a golf outing day with some of the Managing Directors as well as the opportunity to attend a Mets game at the eponymous Citi Field – wouldn’t it be nice to sit in one of the platinum or club seats?

A census of the 31 MBA interns in the class of 2010 (apparently the smallest class in recent times) revealed an interesting and impressive fact: Ross – with 5 students - has the biggest representation amongst the business schools. Another cool thing about the first day is the high level of camaraderie displayed by the summer associate class. Individuals who’d never met before promptly bonded and broke into spontaneous interactions that belied any notions of rivalry that may be expected from people vying for limited full-time offers. We had quality discussions at breakfast, saw a world cup soccer match as a group over an extended lunch and capped the day with drinks at a local watering hole - “Puffy’s Bar”. I’d say that was a pretty auspicious day one.

Hitting the mid-way mark at Sears

This week has been more challenging than most and I am glad for the weekend. I had my first performance review with my manager. It turns out Sears has an extensive performance appraisal system in place, involving the intern’s input, self-appraisal, manager appraisal and subsequent discussion with manager. I have currently completed two steps in the process and am waiting on a second meeting with my manager this coming Tuesday.

I have been given 4 new projects to complete over the next 5 weeks. One involves process improvement follow-up on my first project. The second is a weekly tracking of our vendor contribution targets for the month, involving following up with the buying team on any discrepancies from forecasted contributions. The third is a capital project request for the replacement of jewelry fixtures at a Kmart store in New York. This is a standard project for finance teams in many companies in many industries and I noticed that it is the first thing on my syllabus for ‘Valuation’ in the coming fall quarter. The last project is potentially the most impactful of all my projects. It involves the circulars / inserts in the papers that Sears and Kmart use as standard marketing strategy to incent customers to buy. There has been a company-wide initiative to reduce costs on these circulars by shifting them from Sundays to Thursdays (cadence change) thereby reducing circulation volume. A reduction in sales has been observed over the same timeframe. My task is to identify if the cadence change is the cause of the reduced sales of if there are other contributing factors. It is a strongly analytical exercise based on available data and should help me apply my problem-solving and analytical skills. It allows me the opportunity to display my strengths in this area to my manager.

I also have the opportunity to share my learnings, findings and showcase my skill-set to upper management through the final intern presentation that is due in 3 weeks. I will be doing a power point presentation for the Finance CFO’s as well as other operating business CFO’s within the company. This high level exposure should be very beneficial for me should I choose to return to work full-time at Sears.

Finally on a front closer to home, I am going to hospital twice a week for regular check-ups and fetal monitoring and so far so good!

Amazon 101

I moved to Seattle-town 2 weeks ago. This city reminds me a bit of my San Francisco, where I lived before school. It’s a beautiful and green town, with an edge to it. It has been fun to meet so many new people at Amazon and other MBA interns. Two weeks into my internship and I already feel like I have learned a ton. I have talked to many people, read more than 20 industry reports, and visited a lot of websites. In fact, I will be doing a presentation in a week to talk about all I have discovered about my project so far. It has been interesting to compare and contrast the culture at Amazon with that of Dolby (my previous gig). Both are laid-back, but in different ways. The dress code at Amazon is very casual. I often see very senior managers in shorts and flip-flops. There are at least 5-6 dogs on the floor I work on. I love that part as breaks are so much more interesting. At the same time, meetings are not as casual as they were at Dolby. People get down to business right away, and raise an eyebrow if a meeting is scheduled for more than 30 mins.

As for my project, it is a classic marketing and strategy project that I get to work on from soup, and 2/3^rd the way to nuts. All the concepts and acronyms (5Cs, 4 Ps, STP, Porters) learned in Strategy and Marketing are rushing back and being deployed in real time. The frameworks have really helped my structure my internship. Over the next few weeks, I will be interfacing with managers in different segments of the company. I look forward to learning even more about the business through those interactions. I will leave you with a video from Ted.com, of Jeff Bezos discussing the analogy between the dot com boom and the gold rush.