Last week

Last weekend in New York City, and last week of internship. Just this past week, all the interns gave our final presentation in front of 5 managing directors. We were given a specific company and had to make a pitch to the company based on what we think is the best strategy for them. The presentation actually turned out to be harder than I thought. Everyone in the intern pool was assigned into random groups, and that made meeting up really difficult. I work "early" hours compared to other interns who cover industries, and so, the other interns would tend to schedule meetings late at night and were prepared to stay till 4am since they could get in at 9am, while I have to get in at 7am. Aside from logistics, we also found out that not many interns have the technical knowledge needed. And it was extremely challenging to juggle the presentation with daily work demands; we could be meeting for 5 minutes and someone would get a call to work on something immediately. Overall, it was a mad scramble to pull the pitch together, but all of us managed to complete it and my group was pretty confident and proud of our pitch.

Looking back, every week was very different and very challenging. Everytime I start to get the hang of a certain project, a new project comes up and I have to pick up new skills and knowledge again. It was stressful at first, but I got use to having curve balls thrown at me constantly, and I stop getting all tensed up when something new comes up. It has been a very dynamic 9 weeks, lots of pressure to perform, lots of expectations, but that's what makes this industry so interesting. I definitely learned a lot about this industry - the culture, the work, the politics, etc. Even though it has been a very tough 9 weeks, I also like that I have been pushed to my limits and I've proved to myself that I could handle a high stress environment. I've met so many intelligent and extremely hard working individuals at work, and people that I meet in the industry never fails to impress me. The hours may be long, and I don't get much of a social life, but the dynamics of this industry never fail to attract me, and I will still choose to work in investment banking.

7 weeks in

I have been at my internship for 7 weeks now, and there is still so much to learn about the industry and even my job. I learn something new everyday, and there are challenges all the time. The first observation I made about the industry is that it is very hierarchical. There are ranks within this industry and people put a lot of emphasis and respect on it. This makes sense, since for the people at the top, it took them a lot of determination and hard work to get there. So for my group in particular, I get to sit right across from managing directors  (md) or directors, but I don't get to interact with them a whole lot. The way it works is such that project ideas come from mds, and then the people like associates and directors will plan to make the project work out. So I usually work closely with analysts and associates. I don't think hierarchy is a bad thing, though it does make the office culture a lot more formal.

As for company culture, I must say, I really like Deutsche Bank's culture. I really like that people are willing to take time to explain how to do things, and they are really open to questions as well. For instance, I would be given an assignment, and if I don't understand anything, I could ask the most embarrassing or basic question and they are happy to explain it, even if it would take quite a bit of time. I also like that people in my group are very friendly. They joke around with each other a lot, and often take time to check in with the interns and just hang around to answer any kind of questions. So despite the hierarchy, people are still very approachable.

There's only 3 more weeks left in my internship, and its about time to wrap up some long term projects and kick start the final project!

Busy busy busy

Work has been really hectic. After 2 weeks with my group, people are starting to give me more work and more responsibilities. There are long-term projects to do on top of everyday responsibilities and random tasks and one-off projects. Hours get really long sometimes. So here's how a typical day for me is like - I get in to work at 7am, check my emails for a while, then head off for a meeting at 7.15. I get out of the meeting at 8am, check/respond to emails, get on the office chat to check in with the people I'm supporting, and if there is nothing urgent, I work on my long-term projects. Throughout the day, tasks will come in. For example, the MD may want to pitch to a client, and I would have to build parts of a pitchbook. When the market closes at 4pm, I will start writing market commentaries and send them off to my supervisors. I will keep working on completing those tasks that are due by the end of the day, and on an early day, I end at 9pm. On a busy day, I get out at 11pm. And, busy days actually happen often. So on average, I work about 16 hours a day. I never had to work on Saturdays, but I do work on Sundays. Usually, I would work about 6 hours on Sunday, but this week, some urgent deals came up and I worked 14 hours today. So that's the overview on each day and how my hours look like in a week. Banking is definitely grueling with its long hours, but I've expected this and take it as natural that this is happening.
As for social life, it can be really tricky to get a balance. After the long hours, I just want to go to bed, rest up, and get ready for another long day. So I don't usually get much social life on the weekday. On the weekends, if it was a particularly long week, I would rest up and relax. I would go out to meet friends, and sometimes hang out with other interns, or get a good workout. Work life balance is important, but since this is a summer internship, I'm prioritizing work over life. Life can come after the summer is over :)

"There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second."

So, another fortnight has passed and I find myself becoming more and more integrated into what Amazon calls their 'peculiar' ways. The customer obsession that I mentioned in my previous post is truly something that all Amazonians learn to live by; I constantly get reminded that the focus is never to get too hung up on besting the competition, for if you can truly show that you care for your customers, they will come back to you instead of your rivals. Though this strategy seems to run contrary to what’s preached in most bschool textbooks, AMZN’s care for its customers seems to have paid off big time.

Another thing you will find at Amazon is that for meetings, PowerPoint slides are considered taboo. You got that right – all my deck-crafting skills built up over client meeting after client meeting at Accenture are completely worthless here. Instead, meetings are conducted with the presenter creating a white paper which is then distributed to all the members to read during the meeting. After everyone is done reading, there is a Q&A session to address any open topics up for discussion. The goal of this is to prevent bad content from hiding behind fancy slides and to ensure that the presenter has all the content prepared in a concise and readable format. While it initially seems a little unnerving to have such meetings where everyone is silently scrutinizing your every written word, it serves its purpose to ensure that meetings do not take overly long and keeps discussions on topic. It’s another AMZN peculiarity that gives Amazon its own unique culture.

One nice thing that Amazon does for its MBA interns is to organize executive speaker sessions over lunch (BYO food, naturally – the savings go to bringing all you customers lower prices, etc.) where senior VPs talk about their work at AMZN and give us a chance to pick their brains over various topics. I mean, how often do you get to ask Amazon’s CFO about his thoughts on investor relations? Now all they need is to convince Jeff B to give us a talk too.

Oh yes, I did promise to talk about the elevator art. Basically, the elevator wall panels are whiteboards with markers made available for talented (and not-so-talented) Amazonians to contribute a little ‘art’ on their daily elevator rides. I must admit to being impressed by some pieces, which I’ve shared with you below. It’s a cool touch, though in a building with only 6 floors, these budding Michelangelos have to possess some of the fastest drawing skills on the block.

“My Pokemans, let me show you them”

To round things off, I’d like to remind all avid readers that Amazon is offering a great selection of Kindle titles in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. All you need is an Amazon Prime membership (great value at only $79 annually) and a Kindle device to get started. More than 100,000 titles are available to be borrowed for free, including New York Times bestsellers like the Hunger Games trilogy and all 7 Harry Potter books. Unlike traditional lending, there are no limits on the number of copies available and readers never have to wait in line for the book they want. To learn more about the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, visit www.amazon.com/kindleownerslendinglibrary.

"Problem?" - Trollface

2 weeks of options

Week 2 of my internship ended! To recap, I am in the equity capital markets division and was specifically assigned to the convertibles desk in this division. Overall, this 2 weeks have been an extremely steep learning curve. I took classes on options, but those classes hardly prepared me for what I had to learn at work. There are many complicated products to learn and most of the work on this desk is modelling and pricing options. As I wasn't able to model and price at this point, my supervisor gave me many notes to study and constantly tested me on how much I've absorbed. It was very stressful at first, as I thought I would be working on assignments but instead felt like I've taken an upper level intensive class on options. I must say though, my supervisor was very patient with me. He knew I was struggling to understand the concepts and that options was not something I'm good with, but he took much of his time out to teach me. What was interesting was the way he tried to teach me. He never has a lesson plan, and would leave it up to me to study as much as I can while working on random assignments from other people in the team. His way of testing how much dedication I have to the team was to announce 5 minutes beforehand that he will be testing my knowledge. And so, I have to constantly make sure I was studying and reviewing my notes.

One day, he handed me a presentation on a certain product, walked me through the main points and then told me that I will be teaching this to another intern. After spending some time preparing notes to teach the other intern, right before I was about to teach, he brought in more interns, and said I will be making a pitch of the product to the interns. I was thrown off, did my best to pitch, though I must say it wasn't a good pitch. And that was one of the highlights of the 2 weeks.

I thought I had a great supervisor, albeit a tough supervisor. But I'm really grateful for his time and his dedication to teach me. I will be having multiple supervisors as I rotate through the division, and I'm excited to see the different styles of supervising that I will be experiencing.

"If you build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful."

Okay, so this latest blog entry sees me posting from the wonderful city of Seattle where my stomach has been treated to the gastronomical wonders of 99-cent oysters (self-shucked), geoduck sashimi, fresh salmon and awesome Chinese food. As you can tell from my incessant focus on food after having spent too many months in Ann Arbor, I am truly a Singaporean at heart. Ironically, I don’t recall drinking more than two cups of Starbucks since I got here so that’s one prediction I got wrong.

What I did get right was the dynamic, fast-paced and innovative can-do culture that permeates the workplace here at Amazon’s main offices in the South Lake Union district of Seattle. While most people see the firm as an e-commerce giant who offers everything from cell phones and Kindle devices to streaming video and fresh groceries, it really feels like a big startup where everybody works hard to deliver the best possible experience to the customer. The excitement and energy in this place is simply astounding, something you would not expect from an industry giant with a market cap of $100B.

And when it comes to Amazon, the customer is truly king. Other firms may pay lip service to the notion of customer care, but here at AMZN, it’s not just a customer focus – it’s a customer obsession. You see it everywhere, from top-level managerial decisions down to the way the call centers handle inquiries. It truly makes a difference in the way the company works and it is this that differentiates Amazon from all the other companies out there.

For all my misconceptions of Amazon being an exceptionally frugal company – door-desks come to mind –  I found myself surprised to be given a keychain, water bottle and Kindle Touch on my first few days at work. In fact, everyone got brand new Lenovo Thinkpads, which might have more to do with the firm’s rapidly expanding headcount than actual employee pampering, but it feels good to have a new laptop to work on. So for those of you out there who were concerned about that whole frugality thing, fear not.

Random AMZN fact: One of the buildings here is named Rufus after a dog belonging to Amazon’s former editor-in-chief. Thanks to his pioneering efforts, everyone’s four-legged best friends are welcome in the majority of Amazon’s buildings.

To sum it up, my first few weeks here at AMZN have been a blast with a high-energy workplace, enthusiastic colleagues, brand new buildings, great (albeit expensive) cafeteria food and high-impact projects. I look forward to updating everyone on the wonders of elevators with whiteboard walls in my next post.

In the meantime, if you love your music, check out the Amazon Cloud Player (now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch) which allows you to access all of your music, wherever you are, on all the devices you use. Buy once and enjoy your music everywhere without worrying about storage on your devices. You get 5GB of free storage for starters and can upgrade it starting at a mere $1.75 per month. Visit www.amazon.com for more details.

Some of my new colleagues on the third floor.

2 weeks in NYC and counting!

It's crazy how fast time goes by in New York City. I've been here for 2 weeks now, and I have not had a day when I have nothing to do. I came here 2 weeks ago, and spent everyday of the first week learning to get around the city, find places to buy groceries, etc. Going from Michigan to Manhattan, I was really overwhelmed by the amount of people I see everyday, and I'm still not used to getting stuck in a crowd almost all the time. Interestingly, just by walking around the city, I've bumped into classmates from Michigan - glad to see that many Michigan students are having great internships in the city! After a week, I still did not get to see even half of the city. But at least I know where I can go to get what I need :)

This week was training week for my internship. It was an intensive 5 day training of accounting, finance and learning how to use the databases that I will be using at work. I got to meet a good number of the people in the intern class, made some friends that I will hopefully be touch with, and got to see the floor I will be working at. I will be working with equity capital markets group this summer, and so far, I've only met my supervisors. They are really nice and have promised that we will be getting a great learning experience. I've also met the 5 other interns allocated to the group, and everyone seems to be bonding well and have plans to get together outside of work. I will be starting at my desk this Monday and because of the nature of my group, I actually have to get into work at 7am everyday, but I may actually get out at 7pm. That is actually not typical of investment banking, as many of you may know that bankers typically work till 12am or even pull all nighters. That said, it remains to be seen if I actually get off earlier. Overall, I'm really excited to get on the team this Monday and to meet everyone on the team.

Amazon.com - and you're done

Greetings, one and all! Welcome to the first of what promises to be a series of entertaining and enlightening blog posts covering my summer internship. If you enjoy reading about life as a MBA intern in the U.S., you’ve come to the right place.

Perhaps some introductions are in order. I’m a first-year Ross MBA student (the school endearingly refers to us as “rising MBA2s”) from Singapore who will be interning at Amazon this summer as a product manager with the Kindle division. While I do know the general scope of work, the full details will only be revealed to me once I get to Seattle due to the relatively sensitive – some might call it secretive – nature of the product.

Having come off a demanding MAP (Multidisciplinary Action Project) with Chrysler, I’ve gotten reacquainted with regular working hours for the past 7 weeks or so and am expecting myself to be able to hit the ground running when I start in Seattle at the end of this month. If you’re reading this and thinking about applying to Ross, make sure you stick in references to MAP no fewer than 15 times in your “Why Ross?” essay.

Amazon’s summer internships are known to be pretty intense, sink-or-swim affairs. While this may be a deal-breaker for some, I’d like to think that I’m ready for it having been thrown straight into the deep end many times in my previous career as a consultant. This really is an opportunity for me to explore the technology/e-commerce industry in-depth while working in one of the big four tech firms (Google, Apple and Facebook being the other three) that are set to define the future of the industry. In particular, Amazon’s Kindle is a key area of interest for me given its importance to the firm, with Bezos touting the Kindle Store in the company’s latest earnings report. Surely it can't get more exciting than that?

That wraps up my introductory post. Stay tuned for future episodes where I share more fascinating stories on Seattle, Amazon and what will likely turn out to be a burgeoning Starbucks addiction.

Much to learn

Hi everyone! I'm Priscilla, a BBA junior and I'll be interning at Deutsche bank this summer in the corporate finance division. I will be a summer analyst doing investment banking work. Currently, I'm still waiting to hear back from Deutsche about which group in corporate finance I will be joining. I'm really excited for this internship and really hope to be selected to join my favorite group :)

There's quite a lot I'm expecting from this internship actually. I'm expecting to be pushed to my limits - challenging deals and tasks and long hours. Hard work aside, I'm also looking forward to meeting and working with the many great people that I've been talking to from recruiting till now.
A little background about myself, I came to Michigan from Singapore hoping to join the business school. But when I came here, I decided to try Actuarial Mathematics. I realized I didn't quite like actuarial jobs, and really wanted to give banking a try instead. After many months of hard work, I manage to get this internship with Deutsche and I'm extremely grateful to all the people that have helped me. So naturally, I'm very excited about the internship. I can't wait to finally get to understand life as a banker, work with the amazing people I've met, and learn so much more about the financial industry and the companies that Deutsche works with. And of course, I'm nervous as well. The grueling hours are well known, and I'm worried about burning out. Being international, I'm worried I might misunderstand the culture.
Worries aside, I'm excited for this opportunity and I truly believe this will be a great experience. Thanks for reading and I'll update on my progress at work soon!

Greetings!

Hello everyone -  My name is Amrita and I'm a dual degree MBA + MS student in my 2nd year at the University of Michigan. I'm a fellow of the Erb Institute of Global Sustainable Enterprise, and am focused on findings ways by which businesses can enable positive environmental and social change happen! In particular, I'm interested in for-profit market driven solutions to our natural resource problems and I'm keen to explore the ways this can be achieved via entrepreneurship in emerging markets. 
My blog posts will be slightly unconventional as I will be writing about my experience interning with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) as a research associate with the Corporate Partnership Program. My internship was a part-time position that I was able to juggle my Winter A course load, so these posts will be based on my experiences interning during the semester. 
Environmental Defense Fund is a non profit that has a reputation of being one of the most effective organizations in engaging with businesses and corporations to make step changes in their environmental impact. I had heard about the Corporate Partnership PRogram for over a year and to finally have the opportunity to work with the group was very exciting. I was nervous about being able to perform up to expectations given my other academic and extra-curricular responsibilities, but I decided that this would be my priority for 5 weeks. I look forward to sharing my experiences!

What I'm Expecting for my Summer Internship

I am a BBA and will be interning with Credit Suisse’s investment banking department. As a summer analyst, my role will be to support deal teams in whatever industry or product group I am assigned to. Above a summer analyst, there are analysts, associates, VPs and MDs.

I will be placed on an industry group (telecom, healthcare, retail, etc.) and work on a variety of projects throughout the summer. Projects could include creating a pitch book to present to clients, working on valuation for M&A deals or researching undervalued companies that can be sold.

From the internship, I am expecting to learn a lot about the industry I am assigned to. I will learn about how to value companies and about business strategies that govern M&A decisions between companies.

I am excited about the chance to work in New York, at a big bank and be immersed in a completely new environment. I cannot wait to start seeing how the real world works and leave the protective fences of academia.

However, I am nervous about working with new people. Since the internship requires frequent teamwork, I will need to adapt to a variety of working styles within a short period of time. Also, investment banking is highly stressful and demanding and I wonder if I will be able to perform under pressure.