I saw a few discussions about the highs and lows of interns from the perspective of the FT employees responsible for delegating tasks to the interns; however I couldn't find anything from the perspective of interns.
SO...
How is everyones' internships going? What kinds of seemingly non-job related tasks have your bosses made you guys do? What's the ratio of time you spend actually working to time you spend on tinder/ yik yak/ wso/ other non work related websites/ apps?
For me, I'd say the most boring part of this internship was when my boss was on vacation for 5 weeks (he didn't take a single vacation day for like 2 years so he saved a bunch up). While he was gone my only assignment was to log onto his work email and read him his emails over the phone every morning and afternoon. Other than that I sat staring out the window all day.
I was once given the assignment of assembling Christmas presents for the boss's kid.
i took four 30 minute shits today. so thats how my internship is going.
assigned a project but rarely got invloved in their real works... sometimes just spend whole day reading news, boring online novels, and pretending busy doing sth
lol I thought it was a normal thing to use such binding machines
lifeatboutique
Haha that's what I thought too
I feel you on that lol #boutiqueproblems
THIS. There is no relief that compares to when they travel to a city where there is support staff.
Best: I've gotten to do a couple cool projects in terms of modeling and reports.
When I was at a boutique, I bound books as an associate - it's the worst.
I've gotten to do some pretty cool modeling work (mostly because we're short on analysts), but there was this one time where I had to scan the entire Duff & Phelps Valuation Book (the size of a textbook) so that we had a digital copy.
Startup intern here. Reddit and refill my water bottle 10+ times a day.
Worst experience: No separate guy and girls bathrooms just multiple single ones. Had to take a massive dump, was in there for like 20 minutes and when I came out my female coworker was waiting outside for it. I literally smirked and walked away.
At a BB on a trading desk in research fundamentals: Working on three projects throughout the summer that have been used by the head of the desk and distributed to other desk heads. Needless to say I've really enjoyed it.
He doesn't have a blackberry for emails?
Doing "research" which essentially equates to confirming a development manager's work. I'm pretty much the intern version of a diaper, I make sure the shit doesn't fall through.
Binding pitch books and driving them to the MD's house in the middle of the night with a cab. then realizing I forgot something for him in the office and taking the cab all the back to the office and to the MD's house again.
Printing out two whole data rooms with a crappy 12-page-per-minute printer that goes into cool mode after 100 pages... took me almost a week.
Playing "secretary" and "office manager" in a boutique firm.
Driving around to Target, Academy, Wal-Mart looking for water balloons for a company picnic that was being held during a certain weekend. Also, filling about 300 of those water balloons in an executive kitchen for 3-4 hours.
haha I thought the binding machine was kind of cool at my boutique internship.... but then again I was so happy about my first internship, and I just thought everything was cool about it......
Saved 15% on our company car insurance. Hows that for creating value.
LOL!
Thought the binding machine was awesome when I first started at my boutique. Overall, I've really enjoyed my time, I wish I was exposed to more modeling, but can't complain.
Drove one of my MD's home who was shitfaced after we all went out drinks after work. The next day he asked when we're "turning up" again hah
.
Im in RE and I spend a lot of time shadowing the broker when he is showing properties to people. It's fun but definitely don't want to be in brokerage. I'll also go to various banks and deposit checks for my boss and do random office tasks. The most random thing that I had to do was take the T into Boston and deliver a bunch of papers to a major law firm. Overall a decent experience but I wish I had a chance to add more value.
I've had a decent experience with my internship, but it's just surfing the web 60% of the time.
As for bad experience, one of our managers (younger) died this past Tuesday. Talk about feeling out of place.
Wow that must have been really uncomfortable to be in the mix of all the full time guys who actually knew him really well
Ironically it opened them up to be shortstaffed so I got an offer to work part time 25 hr/w through the school year.
Just to add to my original post. I think the most random thing I had to do was make dinner reservations for my boss and purchase tickets to a concert he wanted to go to.
Im in credit research for a large AM and have spent most of my time modeling, updating models after earnings, writing earnings notes, and random projects for different analysts that are usually pretty cool.
Favorite things ive done so far was build a full model for a large industry announcement and figure out the incremental ebitda for all the major players (sorry for the lack of details, if anyone cares to hear what the project was you can pm me)
Least favorite thing is getting IM's from guys working from home or on the road and having to send them whatever data they need off bloomberg
I was usually always busy and had something relevant to do (modeling, research, reports) at the internships I had, but probably the two worst things I ever had to do was take out the trash through the summer and manually enter Qs worth of trade confirmations into excel for records since a certain BB doesn't provide confirmations electronically.
My first job as an intern at a boutique was to plan 3 MDs' trip to Rio. This entailed me collecting all of their passports, applying for visas, asking them to have pictures taken, background checks done, immunizations etc. Brazil doesn't like Americans coming for business so I had to deal with uncooperative Brazilians in charge of visas. I started over 2 months in advance, but was still struggling right before their trip. I eventually folded and used the company card to pay a travel agency to do everything I couldn't, specifically flying to the nearest Embassy - for each MD. We have 3 offices, so I technically needed to be at 3 embassies: L.A., Texas, and D.C. Almost shit myself when I thought one of the visas wasn't going to get through and I thought my IB career was over before it even started.
Hilarious +1
I had a PM come and tell me he had a interesting project for me to do. I then proceeded to shop for a fucking dining room table for him. He was surprisingly appreciative though for my work
Mine have always been very varied day-to-day.
Some days my manager (and others who would give me work) would be away and I'd have nothing to do all day. I'd do a combination of being productive (news etc.) and WSO.
Not been involved in very interesting work, if I'm honest, but any time when I'm actually busy doing something useful on Excel, for example, is satisfying enough. Although none of the projects have been very difficult, it's always nice to work on Excel, struggle a bit, and then come through and know your results matter (slightly, but matter nonetheless).
Literally browsing the internet all day, at least I get paid to do it.
I was at a small long only AM shop with under $5 billion in AUM. Did equity research, some cost basis work, created a informational flyer for the newly launched mutual fund, and did some financial modeling. It was pretty legit but it got really slow and boring at times
My first internship back in 2012 was in corporate accounting with a engineering firm. They treated me like shit and didn't have anything for me to actually do so they just wanted to file papers in their storage cabinets. It was stupid because these files of papers were stacking at door-heights every week and I was getting paper cuts very often. Just imagine hours of mindless paper filing everyday and you're just thinking you're too smart for this childish shit and why hasn't this company have everything paperless yet. They couldn't even find the stuff that they've filed, a problem that I fixed while I was there. Eventually at the last month of the internship, I literally was in a screw-this mode and did the following:
-for a 9-5 job I ended 10-3 (maybe 2 if I was really feeling it) -watched all Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood episodes at my cubicle (got caught everyday and got threatened by my boss with a bad review, but screw it you prob won't fire an intern in his last month and I won't use you as a reference but I'll go with one of the other employees) -popped 4 brews from the company fridge every Friday at my cubicle and took 4 home in my work bag -took 2 hour lunches instead of 30 mins -learned about finance and started my own trading account -left the papers to continue stacking until it was like 2 doors high (got complained by coworkers like every day that month I kid you not) -left the company on my final day without saying bye to like 90% of my team, hell I ended saying bye to more of the engineers than the people from accounting since they were cooler
Overall in the end, this internship set me off in a weird position because it was hard to tell interviewers for my next job what I did on the internship. But I made ok money, enjoyed my summer, watched an amazing show, cracked a lot of laughs and brews (the company's obviously) with my friends, and transitioned to finance on the side thank goodness.
I think you just revived an almost 3-year-old thread, but I don't care. Didn't happen to me, but have heard everything from people having to write English essays for their boss' children to people interning at BBs and flying business to client meetings.
During my sophomore year internship I once had to run around the central business district delivering contracts to various clients, was literally a messenger boy for an afternoon walking around in full on business attire like a complete jabroni.
Also once had to put together a list of local private schools and their respective costs for future employees that were transferering to that office, was insane seeing the tuition costs some people pay for their fucking 8 year olds...
Today might have been my worst day as a SA (Originally Posted: 06/29/2012)
Manager made me do some difficult task, but I just couldn't handle it. This resulted in him basically scolding me and shaking his head at me and just overall being disappointed.
I wonder if other interns go through similar experiences...
Shit Tyrone, get it together
How should I act on Monday? Try to forget this ever happened or Tell him I will work harder and work to improve on the mistakes that were made?
Give him the finger and tell him to eff off... what do you think you should do?
Don't feed the trolls
I was perfect so I have no idea what you are going through. But if this is real, I would forget about it and just keep grinding. Positive attitude. ALWAYS!
Don't break the golden rule of being a SA of not making your team's life harder then it already is.
1) No, not every intern goes through this. You fucked up. 2) It's done and it's not that big of a deal. Don't mess up again.
I'm curious, what was the task?
Well, SA's are expected to mess up. There is no way your work will be perfect. Even when it is perfect, your associate (or the VP/MD) might decide that it is not. Attitude is everything.
And, no, today was not your worst day as an SA. You had time to post on WSO. Your worst day will be pulling an all nighter, then not going home until 1am the next day. That experience may be compounded by making (multiple) stupid mistakes...attention to detail goes out the window after 36 hours without sleep.
Busines Insider: Worst Mistakes by Tech Interns (Originally Posted: 10/29/2013)
Think you're having a bad day? Tell that to these interns. From the cliched "I burned down the office", the classic "reply all" fiasco, to bringing down the entire banking infrastructure of a country... they've done it all.
I have a strong feeling that if you put these kids into a room together, they could bring down the world. Probably unintentionally.
Enjoy!
Link to original article
The reply to all is so funny
Haha awesome!
Best/Worst moment as a SA? (Originally Posted: 08/12/2012)
Best - listening to the CEO speak
Worst - staffed on a very difficult assignment, and umm...yeah..
reported as spam
Best - Being in the front row of the European crisis in the bank, would have never known many things if not because I was there at the moment. When the global head came to tell us what was going on, was just icing on the cake.
Worst - Having to dry clean my suits when the closest shop was kind of far away. Damn I hated that, ruined my weekends.
Best - chilling at the monthly company luncheon, cracking crude jokes with the associates Worst - broad buy-side advisory deals. Enough said.
Best- Sex with head of HR in THE GS elevator.
Worst- When I realized it was at the NJ ops building.
Best/Worst part of being an SA (Originally Posted: 04/27/2008)
With the summer fast-approaching, I'm sure many baby monkeys, like myself, are eagerly anticipating their first real intern experience, being an SA. For you SA's with past internships, and for the FT'ers out there, if you had to narrow it down to just ONE thing for us to look forward to the most, and ONE thing to dread this summer, what would it be?
Worst: not being able to hang out with your friends as much
Best: high salary and perks, free food, free taxis, free trips around europe (if you're lucky)
No time for gym, girls, mates, watching sports, sleep, reading, family, my birthday!!!...the list goes on
Those free trips will be in economy, not fun at all :)
Best Part: The Money
Worst Part: Sucking big MD cock during what would normally be free time (nights, weekends, etc.)
Worst part: getting hit with a f*ckload of work on a Friday evening when all your friends from S&T are getting wasted
As SAs, did you guys really not get to go out and have fun? I know the analysts in my group emphasized that we (SAs) go out and enjoy NYC, just as much as we get a good experience during our internship. Obviously it is very group specific, but sounds like it would be a miserable summer to literally be only sleeping and working.
Yeah, but to be honest, getting the offer is paramount, so you have got to put in the facetime. Guess it depends which division as well though.
best- $ bills, boozing, getting to go back to school for senior yr worst- working
Worst: Being a schoolboy and having no clue.
Best: The warm feeling you have knowing the analyst and not you will catch the sh't when it hits the fan.
The best part by far is knowing that you still have a year of school left. Nothing can touch that.
Agree with bateman.
It will vary from group to group. My group really likes taking the SA's out to drink and hang out on weeknights (when there is free time).
Sucky part is that the SA's are generally expected to stay in the office until everyone has gone home. Even in a group like mine where there's not much facetime, we do expect our interns to stick around. My 2nd year said the best part of his 1st year wasn't when he got his bonus; it was when the SA's came and took some of the non-deal work (updating deal flows, formatting, etc.) off his plate.
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