Technology analyst Review

The initial learning curve and the size of the company can be a bit frightening at the start of the placement, but I have been fortunate to work with a number of talented and very helpful people, both within my assigned team, as well as outside of it. It's a great opportunity to develop from both a technological stand point, as well as a financial perspective. As far as company culture goes, there is a great deal of emphasis put on collaboration, as well as learning. I have been in the situation of learning a new piece of technology and then demonstrating it to my team at least twice during my work placement.

The teams in the technology division are mostly organised in an Agile fashion, which makes it easier for you to integrate with the team and earn their trust. I felt very comfortable approaching people of all levels of seniority within my team and they have always found the time to help/advise.

Support was given in forms of weekly catch-ups, formal and informal reviews at fixed times in the year, as well as upon project completion. A plentitude of learning resources were given to me by my managers, in order to better understand the scope of my work, together with one to one meetings and presentations in which I could ask questions.

On an average day, you can find yourself doing individual work for about 6 hours, spend a further 1-2 hours interacting with colleagues on work related matters and still manage to squeeze in either a lunch or gym break.

As my level of understanding grew, more challenging projects were given to me. As time passed, I also noticed that the team's trust in me that I could get things done also increased.

Although most of the technology related skills I have developed are specific to Goldman, I strongly believe that the communication/teamwork skills I have developed will be of great help for me in the future, together with my new understanding of finance.

Every morning we would have a scrum meeting, which helped people get their days started, by organising what each of our tasks were going to be. The team was very friendly and helpful. We had a number of fun social activities over the course of my year with them.

The summer part of the internship is very dense in events, giving you a good understanding of the inner workings of the company, together with where it is placed in the market. You get a high exposure to senior management over the course of the summer. The rest of the year differs in the sense of being a more work-like setting, with hardly any events aimed at interns, as you spend most of the time with your team.

You are given access to a wide range of training opportunities within the company, which can vary from seminars, wide scale presentations, virtual learning platforms, or simply access to a large collection of e-books, via SafariBooks. The team you get assigned to will also invest a lot of time at the beginning in training you.