i realise termites are almost chewing this place away, hence the facelift to something simpler. the last time i had a moment to breathe was midway through my internship; everything else from then on was a blur. here are the last six months in summary:
one; the credit suisse internship
more or less the best thing that happened to me in 2011. the application through to the interviews seemed so smooth, some people commented that they were rather lenient this year. the entire summer analyst cohort numbered ninety plus, where more than half were from technology. the key takeaways from those ten weeks were opportunities: to meet people, to experience culture, to learn things, and to make a difference.
the mandatory nature of meeting people became apparent on day one and two which ended with compulsory networking. from then on, it was understood that every other event would have a networking element (there was some correlation to whether food and alcohol were served). teams were also randomly assigned for the meet the md program where teams had to schedule and meet five managing directors or directors by the end of the term to uh.. chat. sometimes the interaction was one-sided, like CEO brady dougan’s address to the global summer analyst cohort, which was cool since i’ve never sat in a video conference with hundreds of people in it (i think my manager was envious). the whole idea of building networks suddenly has tremendous value once you realise you have a problem you can’t solve and help is but a phone call/IM/email away. to quote induction training, “would you rather google for five hours or call someone for five minutes?”. the question then becomes: have you made enough effort in getting to know more people so that you know the right someone to call in times of need?
culture was another inevitable aspect. you can lie in a ten-minute interview, but you can’t get 55,000 global employees to lie to you over ten weeks. everything i saw on each of those 50 days was real-world work to run the bank and continually increase efficiency. the fact that CS is less keen on lateral hires and focused on grooming internal talent from graduate levels to fill senior positions eventually shows their long-term vision that attempts to rid diluted cultures.
out-of-office learning was my favourite, even if it was just an off-site training lecture at raffles link. of course field trips to the trading floor and datacenter plus the IT expo where the entire of technology got together to share were highlights. besides the basic finance elearning that everyone had to complete, i was very much into how people manage complexity. since studying technical processes was kinda part of my job, it was interesting to see how much i could comprehend (the answer was barely enough, but i grew to understand that was normal). taking charge of my own projects meant that i was at liberty to propose solutions (unfortunately to build them as well) which ended up making life easier for certain people. to hear managers with vastly more expertise than me showing appreciation for my work exudes quite a bit of satisfaction, especially when i felt more could be done given time. that said, the potential to drive change in an open organisation with overflowing complexity is limitless.
shortly after completing my stint at CS, i was given an offer for a repeat internship. i also learnt from a colleague that my projects were inherited by a new graduate analyst to be further developed (hopefully my documentation makes sense). though it was a great experience, i turned down the offer in favour of exploring other avenues. trust me, that email was one difficult mail to write but i felt it was necessary in my capacity of continual learning at this point in life.
two; attempting to squeeze government money
as part of ida’s elite initiative, i had 6 grand to spend on training courses. being the opportunists we are, most of those in my batch unwillingly parted with 6 grand of our own in an effort to increase our perceived value through certifications. unfortunately, time became quite an issue and i only managed to complete and pass (and reimburse) the easiest of three certs: the ITIL v3 Foundation. CAPM and CEH funds are frozen till i complete and pass them :(
three; the semester begins. and ends.
junior year: a weird term for a penultimate student if you ask me. my first semester doing four IS mods that don’t feel like IS mods. taking both retail banking and financial markets made the contrast between retail banks and investment banks rather obvious, down to the guest speakers. the “don’t throw away until it completely breaks down” mindset against the “do whatever it takes to achieve competitive advantage” focus made it pretty clear where i am not headed in my career. architectural analysis and networking felt like computer science mods, where the former drained out the cpu cycles of all my peers doing performance load tests and the latter was an opportunity to buy expensive toys and perform weird tests on them.
i also spent the greater part of post-internship and term time to work on PRISM, the faculty magazine i revived after a two-year hiatus. this will be my legacy after stepping down as publications director from the 7th smu school of information systems society.
four; fyp begins
right after the exams, it was full speed ahead to clear fyp acceptance. we already shipped in a pair of nexus s phones because of their special powers and built a simple prototype for the presentation. thankfully we passed acceptance, but there is still a tonne of fuzzy work left to sort out before actual development can begin. no risk, no return right?
five; plans for summer/fall 2012
summer 2012 planning has commenced on a rocky start with an early rejection note, but i can’t possibly expect everyday to be sunday. applications will continue and hopefully i will end up in a nice place. i am also planning for an exchange semester in fall 2012, so stay tuned.
