Beyond The Semesters: E06
Welcome back to Episode 6 of Beyond The Semesters, an initiative by Coding Club, IITG in collaboration with Student Alumni Interaction Linkage(SAIL), IITG where we interview and try to get a peek into the life and work of IIT Guwahati graduates currently working in different domains of computer science.
This time we have with us Bishwendra Choudhary from the class of 2019. He is a Computer Science Engineering graduate and currently works as an Associate at Goldman Sachs. In this talk, he shared with us his experiences after graduation and also gave us insights about the corporate world.
The following is what beholds beyond the semesters !!
1. Can You tell us something about your job as an Analyst at Goldman Sachs?
The post is something for an analyst, but contrary to what a lot of people think, it is not necessarily a data science related post. There are multiple roles here, so if you are interested in a JAVA role and want to become a pure JAVA developer, you can show your CV to the firm manager, and they may shift you into the same team where the JAVA work is going on. I work as a JAVA back-end developer, so mostly say software developer only. Still, some teams do work on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence as well. So it all depends on your interest and what you are mentioning in your CV. They use some filters and find out what post you would be good at. They want the best out of you.
2. Generally, many students from engineering colleges don’t have much knowledge about the analyst profile. So, from the beginning, were you preparing completely for the SDE profile, or were you focussing on the Analyst role?
In college, I just did coding questions and competitive programming because they test your mind and change your thinking to solve problems. Here, you will face real-life situations, and you need to solve those problems efficiently, only then will your project be good, and run fast. So in college, I used to think about getting the solution in an efficient method, and that’s the only thing I did. I am not talking about any other fields like ML, Development, etc. They are also great if you are interested in them.
3. How is corporate life different from your college life and can you share some experiences where your college life is helping you in your job?
College life is good; you don’t have any pressure and learn many things. Sometimes you do the complete assignment at the last hour and learn many different things that also help. So I mean here also you have a deadline, but it is not always so strict that you need to finish your work in a given time, you get enough time to enjoy your life too. You see, we have holidays on weekends. It’s kind of 8 hours of work in the office on weekdays, but the work is exciting and colleagues are really helpful. I used to think at the beginning that I did not have much knowledge. I had to google many things and then come back. But later, I realized that seniors and managers help you and give you solutions directly, saving your time. It’s beneficial.
4. How was your transition from college life to the corporate world? Did you have any expectations vs reality experiences that you would like to share?
I have become more responsible here because now you are part of the company and getting used to the real world, so if you make any mistake here, there will be a chance that many people will get affected. We can’t make these mistakes here, so we need to take responsibility and follow the rules here. We can delay our work in college, but here things are different. The thing you should learn before coming here is that you should know one language properly to understand the syntaxes because here you will have to use something you would not have in college. Here, you can quickly learn those and easily see those in the code. OOPs concepts are also essential. In some teams, Operating systems also play an important role. We use the libraries to solve our problems in the minimum time possible because here what matters is that you have to find a solution in a given time. So for that, either you use the library or make your library to solve the problem.
5. We saw in your CV that you interned in the field of data science. Can you tell us something about your internship experience and the preparations you had done for that?
Actually, at that time, I had not prepared well. In the initial few interviews, I got rejected by some companies in the final round. Then I thought, whatever company comes next, I will apply.
But soon, I realized that this field was not for me. Also, as I come from a Computer Science background, I like to spend more time on actually writing the code rather than looking for it on the internet (as it is generally done in ML-based roles). This is my personal opinion, and because of this, I didn’t find that job too exciting. Also, in college, I did some projects on JAVA and learned threading and multi-threading, and I started loving those things.
6. Which clubs were you a part of? Did you participate in Inter IIT events or any other College fests?
It is good to be part of clubs. You get to develop your leadership qualities. I was a part of the Marketing team in Techniche and Alcheringa. You get to learn leadership qualities from those things. If you are handling some juniors, you’ll get to learn many things. Also, you have to follow a certain system in the corporate world. So, if you already know those things, it would be beneficial.
7. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s biggest investment banks and has people working in different fields. Can you tell us something about the work culture at Goldman Sachs?
Some teams work very proactively, such as the finance and trading department. Around 30% of the firm’s revenue comes from the trading department. Since it’s a huge office, if you are working as a software developer, then you would find only software developers around you. The environment is quite good. You can wear anything according to your comfort, and the work-life is also very flexible.
8. So can you tell us about some pros and cons of working in the finance field?
This finance-based company is converting into a product-based company. Daily, there are two meetings, which is a disadvantage as you won’t see in big tech companies. But it can be good for you as you learn many things from others. Goldman Sachs is a US-based company, so sometimes there are issues of time zones as their working hours are different from ours. Also, if they face issues in scheduling the meeting time because of the difference in time zone, they can relocate you. But this is quite rare; otherwise, the environment is quite good to work in.
9. Does working as an engineer in an investment bank guarantee that you would also gain some knowledge of finance. If you gain a good amount of knowledge of finance, will it be possible for you to change your role from an engineer to a finance role?
Yes, there are some training sessions bi-weekly where you get some knowledge of finance. You can also do some more research and change your department. If you have a good amount of knowledge, then I think you can. Some teams are working on trading systems. If you can move to those teams, acquire more skills, and write the code, you can move to higher positions. There is some rating point system even for the managers. If you move from one team to another, your previous manager will receive some negative points, whereas the opposite would be the case for your new manager.
10. Do you think the knowledge which you have gained is helping you to manage your finances better than someone working in a different domain-like, like SDE?
I am not that sure about the tech companies, but I don’t see any finance knowledge there. If you take financial training seriously and start trading and investing in stocks, then you can benefit. Sometimes, information first flows through the people working here in investment banks.
11. In a company like Goldman Sachs, where there are different sections to work in, how easy or difficult is it for someone to change their department and also what is their policy for relocation?
It is not that difficult. You just need to show your skills and interest. You can easily change your position and post, even from the field of Backend engineer to an ML engineer. There is a portal called internal mobility in which you have to fill the form according to the posts and positions vacant and the open divisions. You can then check with the managers, and at most, one or two interviews will be conducted. In short, it is not that difficult.
If there is a need for people for a particular job and there are not enough people in their office, they may call people from India to work on their project. Although, a month-long induction program is conducted outside India. It takes time to relocate to GS. If you work seriously for 6–7 years and are involved in some work from which many people can benefit, they can relocate you to their foreign offices.
12. What is the workload like? Do you get free time after a day’s work to follow your hobbies?
Goldman Sachs’ (GS) office timing is from 11 am to 7 pm, i.e., 8 hours of work. So, you can easily pursue some of your hobbies like swimming in the morning time, and at the weekends, you can take part in activities which generally take a longer time. Also, the work-life is not that fixed. There might be days where you have to do 8–9 hours of work, whereas, on some days, you might not have that much work to do. There are also some gaming zone rooms and also they hold some tournaments and do some cultural things to take care of their employee’s physical and mental health.
13. Goldman Sachs is an investment bank. So is it that the people working there in the finance sector who are more likely to be from IIMs get more respect and value than engineers?
No, I never felt anything like that. The office is quite large and everywhere around you, you mostly will find people working in the same areas as yours. If you do your work sincerely, you’ll be praised by your colleagues and will get a promotion as well. Overall, the work culture is quite good.
14. You must have studied courses like DBMS, OS, Computer Graphics, Networking. So how much are they used now in your job profile in terms of knowledge that you gained?
Every course is not that important. It depends on the team you are working in. For example, if you are working as a Java developer, you will use multi-threading and some parts of the operating system to learn how to code the threads. Some companies and GS teams also need Networking concepts to route the requests to GS hosts. Even if you don’t have enough knowledge of a course, you can easily learn them after joining. Although some courses like operating systems and data structures are essential, you should pay attention to them during your semesters.
15. It is believed that you are likely to get more workload in growing startups and quant-related companies like Goldman Sachs in comparison to what you have in some big tech giants. So is that true?
In startups, the workload is one factor. You’ll have to work for more hours there, but learning is outstanding if you work in a startup. You get to build things from scratch, from working on the architecture to coding and testing. While in a big tech giant, a manager assigns you a task and you just have to complete that. Thus the learning curve is on a higher side. If you take four years to learn something in a tech giant, you can quickly learn that in 2 years if you work in a startup.
16. So, at your current stage in the industry, would you prefer to work in a startup or continue working in the MNCs?
Personally, if any start-up is willing to pay me a decent paycheck, I would prefer to work because learning is excellent. One thing that is good about these startups is the knowledge you gain. So, if you work for a few years in a startup and plan to return to any big MNC, you will likely be getting a much higher post. But this again entirely depends on you and both options are acceptable. It is you who should find the work interesting.
17. Can you tell us how Covid has affected your work life? And do you prefer work from home or office culture? And did work-from-home somehow affect your efficiency?
See, there are pros and cons to both of them. Working from home has its benefits, but working from home reduces your learning ability. Working in an office, you can interact with others and learn through their thought process, or if you get stuck in any problem, they can provide you with ideas and unique solutions. So I think that collaborative learning is a lot more while working in an office, but this is not the case for WFH. Another thing which is different in these two situations is the working hours. While working in an office, there is usually a fixed timing for your work, but somehow that is difficult to maintain from your home. You typically work till 9 or 10 in-house, but this was not the case in the office.
Coming to your question on efficiency, I initially thought it would decrease, but somehow it increased. I usually don’t take many breaks in-home, which can be one possible reason.
18. We know that most engineers find Bangalore an ideal work location, and many of your college friends must be working there. So do you guys still hang out on the weekends or any other free time?
Ya, we do. We often go on trips, play cricket, hang out together, and do much other stuff. Though it is difficult for us to sync our schedules, we try to make the best of what we have. One important thing is that you will make many more new friends mostly from your workplace and these friends will become as close as your college mates. One good thing about working in Bangalore is that there are many other things to do here and it is a bonus when your friends are there around you.
