Nikhil's Summer at Goldman Sachs

Summer 2015

Nikhil is a summer intern in the Bengaluru Technology Division’s Regulatory Operations Group, studying for his Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering at Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering, Mysore.

LEARNING FROM COMMUNITY TEAMWORKS

18 AUG 2015 - BENGALURU
 

I think CTW (Community TeamWorks) is one of the many things that make each employee of Goldman Sachs proud to be a part of the firm, and it’s great that interns get to be a part of this activity.

For my CTW, I joined interns and full time employees from several divisions at a school for disabled children, where we helped students with arts and crafts projects. In addition to giving back, it was a great way to meet new people. We started as strangers and at the end of the day we were all taking selfies together. Experiencing the spirit of the children as well as the teachers dedicating their lives to serving others was a powerful experience.

If I had a chance to do my internship all over again, I would network with even more people across the firm. My internship showed me how important collaboration and teamwork are to achieving success. Being at my CTW made me realize that there are so many more great people I didn’t get a chance to connect with. The sense of community that I have felt here in the firm is something that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

 

THE IMPORTANCE OF PEERS

23 JUL 2015 - BENGALURU
 

I expected the corporate and college environments to be very different but I actually don’t find them that different at all other than the dress code (casual summer Fridays are a welcome surprise). Both environments are very collegial and everyone knows how to have fun on Friday evenings after work. Teamwork is very important for accomplishing our work and I’ve been very happy to see that people in Goldman Sachs Bengaluru help each other out as much as possible.

I feel that an important take-away from the summer internship so far has been the relationships that I have developed with the other interns. We all came as strangers unknown to one another on day one and, candidly, I never thought that my peers would form an important part of my internship experience. While working on a project, I’ve come to lean on my peers who come from diverse fields and work in other divisions to help me get an understanding of how the project would be put to use in their respective areas, which I use to tailor my approach. Then I work with peers within my division on the project itself. They have helped me avoid messing up a couple of times! For me, having a support network of peers has been one of the best aspects of my internship at Goldman Sachs.
 

GOLDMAN'S CULTURE OF COLLABORATION  

09 JUL 2015 - NEW YORK


I had always wanted to do my internship at an internationally respected company like Goldman Sachs and am very happy to work here as an intern. But, when I started, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Being a computer programmer I wondered how on earth computer science engineers and people from the financial field would work together. Those two fields seemed utterly disconnected to me. But here I am collaborating with fellow interns from commerce, psychology and computer science. It is fascinating how we each use our diverse expertise in collaborating on common goals.

Collaboration and a sense of community have been a part of my experience in other ways too. When I started, the first thing that impressed me was the “buddy” system, which really made me feel welcome. But it wasn’t just my buddy who went out of their way to help me. I was assigned to develop a User Interface for a reporting tool and I had to use the “WebUI toolkit”, the firm’s internal guide for user interface development. When one gentleman noticed the WebUI toolkit page opened in my browser he asked me if I was using the toolkit and I told him I was. It turned out he and his team had worked on making the toolkit and asked me to ping him whenever I had any doubts. I did so and got loads of guidance and help from his team in learning and using the toolkit. I was fortunate both for the coincidence and for his generous assistance.

 

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