Day in The Life of a Goldman Sachs Intern
What do you get up to as an investment banking summer analyst in New York?
Introducing Kenji
Kenji is a Cornell University graduate and worked as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs in their NYC headquarters over the Summer of 2019. In this article, he’ll give a breakdown of a typical day during his 10-week internship.
Internship Role & Context
Before we start, a little background information – the investment banking division at Goldman Sachs is split into two main sections, advisory and financing. Advisory is advising companies on what they should do with their money, so this involves mergers & acquisitions, restricting and activism. Whilst, financing is concerned with raising money for a company, so has to do with structured finance, equity offerings, and leverage finance.
Depending on which side you’re in, your schedule will vary. For those in financing, the average day starts about 2 hours earlier, as it’s linked to the market. In New York, the markets open at 9.30am so financing employees have to be there well ahead of the opening to prepare for the day ahead. On the other hand, whilst advisory departments typically arrive two hours later, the hours both sides work are similarly long.
A Day in the Life of a Goldman Summer Analyst
The average day I worked was 15 to 16 hours long and because I worked on the financing side, I was on a relatively early schedule. The day would begin around 7:30am and end at 11:30pm, with breaks for coffee and meals along the way. Let’s get into the details.
6:30am-7:15am
On the average day, I would wake up around 6.30am, and aim to be in the office by 7:15am. I would grab a quick breakfast on the way.
7:15am-8:30am
Once I was in the office I would start to catch up on emails, see what had happened the night before, and start to prepare a market update (this task would alternate between interns).
The idea of the market update was to debrief the team on the key highlights of the day or week before. It would take me about an hour to find the relevant news, which covered how the interest rates had moved, when the next federal reserve meeting was, and any political or business activity that was worth nothing. For the most part, it focused on interest rates, as those affected equities, bonds, derivatives, and other financial products that we were working with.
I mainly got the information from the Bloomberg Terminal, which is the industry standard tool for collecting financial data. If you’re curious a yearly subscription for the terminal is about $24,000, it shows just how essential it is as the investment banks are willing to pay so much for it.
8:30am-9:00am
After this, I did the presentation for the market update, which would last about 15 minutes between me talking and team members asking questions. Then I might take a 15-minute break to grab coffee with a colleague.
9:00am-11:00am
After that, I would usually go back to my desk to check emails for any tasks or feedback on my work. Typically, I would have received some feedback from my analyst or associate on a PowerPoint desk, asking to make changes. These would be along the lines of “this graph doesn’t make sense, make it a column graph instead of a pie chart”, “check these numbers again”, or “let’s add a slide on our past deals”.
In case you don’t know the investment, bank hierarchy is as follows: Summer Analyst (me), Analyst, Associate, VP (Vice President), and MD (Managing Director). As you can imagine, the lower your level, the more of you there are.
On a good day, I’d be able to get on with the work, but usually an analyst would come up to me and ask for favors like help with an urgent PowerPoint deck or if I could double check some numbers on Bloomberg.
11:00am-12:00pm
At 11am, I’d get on an internal call with some of the senior bankers, and people from other divisions (like the research team), or another office (like London), to discuss things such as how a live deal is going, how we’re doing on timing, how we can pitch it to a client etc.
As an intern, I mainly took notes to summarize the call in an email. Occasionally, I’d confirm a number or two on the call, but for the most part I didn’t participate. To be honest, I wasn’t going to know much with only 5 weeks of experience, especially compared to a banker that’s being working for 10 years.
12:00pm-1:00pm
I’d spent the next hour summarizing the call in an email and get back to doing any edits I was given in the morning.
1:00pm-1:30pm
I put lunch here as a rough guide, but to be honest lunch times varied depending on work. Sometimes I had meetings, or other stuff going on, so I couldn’t eat till later. On a good day, lunch was 30 minutes. Usually, I would go down to the cafeteria, and get something to go, which I would then eat at my desk. A little depressing, but that’s what everyone did, as an intern there’s no big client lunches with champagne and all the stuff they like to put in the movies!
1:30pm-3:30pm
Then I would finish my presentations and send them up the ladder to analysts and associates for review. They would then give me a couple more, but minor changes, and then it would be sent to the big boys, the VPs and MDs. Usually, they didn’t have that much to say, other than change a couple of things here and there, so that’s the general back and forth that goes on with work.
3:30pm-4:30pm
In the afternoon, there’d probably be another client meeting, this might be to discuss the proposal I’d been working on. Typically, the person with the highest rank does all the talking, so probably the MD or VP. As an intern, I’d be taking notes once again and getting it all-ready to debrief in an email post-meeting. Chances are the client asked for something more or the senior bankers requested something else, so that’d be another task which would trickle down to the intern as well.
4:30pm-4:45pm
As a break, I might try to organize a coffee chat with one of my colleagues to get to know them better. This is quite typical in investment banking as networking is an important part of being an intern, to make connections outside of your department. In my case, the VP told me I had to get coffee with everyone on my team, so I did. That was around 20 to 30 coffees, which I tried to go for all in the first 5 weeks of my internship.
4:45pm-7:30pm
By the late afternoon, meetings are over for the day, and I could finally get to start working on the bigger tasks. These might be things like creating or updating an excel model, such as creating a useful template for tracking how deals are going, or updating a valuation model that was used in a previous deal so that it is up to date for the next deal. This is where I’d get the change to apply some of the things I’ve learnt in university, namely some accounting and finance.
From about 7pm onwards, I’d start getting my hopes up that I might be able to leave before 10pm that night.
7:30pm-8:00pm
By dinner time, the cafeteria is closed so I would go outside to grab something, usually from the food court right next to the office. I would eat at my desk again, but this time it’d be a little more relaxed as the markets were closed, and there’d be nothing pressing since there was no more meetings for the day.
8:00pm-11:30pm
In the evening, I would finish up any work that’s been dragging on. Basically, this would include all the PowerPoint desk feedback, the excel model, emails, and anything else. Also, here is when an analyst or associate will ask if you’re busy. They’re just asking out of politeness because as an intern you can’t really say no to whatever they’re going to request. So, then I would do whatever PowerPoint or excel stuff they’d requested, and the dream of leaving the office by 10pm quickly faded.
11:30pm
Here’s when I would do my final round of “do you need help with anything” to whoever is left in the office, and hope that they would just tell me to go home. Most days, 11:30pm on, I was fairly tired so the work I’d produce wouldn’t be great. Unless I had something really pressing, I would try go home.
Sometimes I had to stay, and my worst day out of the 10 weeks was probably staying till 2am in the office, as the team asked for help on something that was due the next morning. If that was avoidable, I would get out of there before midnight.
12:00am
By midnight I’d get to walk home. Goldman did offer a free taxi service, but I was living in a residence close to the office, and I preferred to get some fresh air, so I’d walk.
I’d get home and go straight to sleep. And the next day I’d go again.
Usually Saturdays were completely off as an intern, but I did go to the office every Sunday, and I’d put in anything from 6 to 14 hours depending on the workload.
Final Remarks
So that’s a day in my life! Take this as a rough guide, as many things would arise changing my daily schedule, especially when there were live deals. Although, on a really calm day, I could be out of there around 9:30/10pm.
That said, the hours you work will vary by location and division. The investment banking division is notorious for having the toughest hours, but some divisions like asset management are a lot more relaxed. As for location, most big cities like London, Tokyo or New York are going to have long hours, mainly because a lot of business happens in those areas, so there’s a lot of work to be done.
Additional Resources
If you want to further develop your skills to be a stronger candidate for roles at Goldman Sachs and other investment banks, take a look at our Excel for Business & Finance Course, our Complete Finance & Valuation Course and more using the get started button below.
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