Technology Decoded at Goldman Sachs London
So it happened I was the lucky one to attend Technology Decoded at Godman Sachs in London. And I must admit, it was worth it. The event itself was advertised as presenatation/workshops from the technology department at GS but it turned out to be much more.
I received an email five days before the event that I have been selected to attend. GS would reimburse all travel expenses including plane tickets. At this point, it was a no-brainer. I have never been in London before and if anything it would be an all paid trip to London. I have confirmed my interest and been redirected to American Express to make my booking for the trip.
My flight to London was scheduled for 7.10 am which was a killer time for me, getting up at 4 in the morning would definitely not make it into my top 10 pleasant morning but it had to be done. The flight was luckily on time and we left Edinburgh at 7 and headed south for London. I was pleasantly surprised to receive full English breakfast in flight - a chance to settle my stomach and finally enjoy my morning. We landed at 8.20 right on schedule but to due to management issues at Heatrow airport London we were not allowed to park the plane. To be precise, the parking spot assigned to our flight was taken by another British Airways plane that required de-frosting. Unfortunately, it took about 40 minutes before we were allowed to park the plane and leave the airport.. I was already running behind my schedule.
I rushed through the airport and into the underground to get a train to the city center. I managed to catch a train at around 9.20. I had to suffer through a 75 minute journey to Covent Garden. Once there, I made a grave mistake taking stairs out of the underground thinking it would be faster than lifts. It turned out the underground was around 60 meters underground and my journey up the stairs took the better out of me. Once on bright sunlight again, I rushed to GS headquarters 20 minutes away.
I arrived at GS five minutes before the official start of the event. I was given a name tag and sent to floor 7 to find my seat. The presentation started at 11.10. The program for the day was the following:
- General info about GS
- Application skills
- Lunch with GS employees
- 10-minute Tech Net
- Snacks
- Workshop
- General panel
As you would have guessed, General info about GS consisted of information about the various divisions in GS and their roles in the overall performance of GS. We were introduced to the way technology plays an essential role to majority of activities at GS. Apparently, GS spends 2 billion pounds on its Technology department - quite impressive.
Application skills - mainly common mistakes during interviews, cover letters and CVs. Most of the information was stuff I knew of before as it was mostly common sense but there were some neat hints as how to make yourself stand out.
After, we were invited to have lunch with some GS employees and to chat to them about their work and experience. This was probably one of the most interesting parts - not because there was free food (yes, I do admit its importance...) - but mainly because I got many different viewpoints of what it is like to work for GS.
Another very interesting part of the event was the 10-minute Tech Net. Essentially, five member of GS Technology team were invited over to talk about projects they have worked on. Majority were projects out of core GS Technology but very interesting projects nonetheless. Each speaker had 7 minutes of presentation time followed by 2 minutes of questions. This gave the section very dynamic structure and it made it very difficult to be bored. The presentations were about GSs iPhone application for market research, a desktop utility with completely customizable features, a blend of windows frame management and GSs in house programming language and two other which I cant recall at this moment (will be filled once I remember :) ).
Next came free snacks and coffee followed by some networking with other students and chat with the presenters.
Once all the cupcakes and snacks were gone, we were invited back into the presentation hall to participate in a workshop. We were divided up into teams as we were sitting at tables. The task was to build a model out of Lego - wait, not so simple. Each team member was given one out of two professions - architect or a builder. Architects were the only ones allowed to go to the next room and look at a model there, they were not allowed to touch it, just see it. They would come back and tell the layout/design to a builder who in turn would try and replicate it. The aim was to build a replica of the model as close to the original as possible. Even the colors were suppose to match..
Finally, there was an open panel with few GS employees and we were given the opportunity to ask questions. This was the second best part as we got real insight into what is a typical day at GS like and so on. We finished at half 5 and my journey back was about to begin.I set off towards Bank station. I was suppose to take the DLR train to London City Airport from there. I did not have too much time but I decided to take few minutes and look around, take few pictures.
I arrived at London City Airport about an hour before my flight and, as starving as I was, searched for some sandwiches. To my surprise there were not any available in the whole airport hall. I got on the plane and slept all the way through to Edinburgh.
Another half an hour on the bus and I was back home. Dead tired but glad to have gone to London and back in one day plus to have attended the event.
I would definitely recommend going to this event for anyone who gets the chance, you might not come by a free trip to London everyday..
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