My Experience as a SWE Intern at Goldman Sachs
In college, I interviewed here as I also went to school in Utah. I will never forget all the red flags as I stepped foot into the building.First was the dress code. Everyone was in suits or dresses, even the developers. Some more relaxed, but everyone looked as if they were from Wall Street. I remember being the least dressed person there interviewing with my khakis and red dress shirt (no tie).Every hiring manager except one(I interviewed for 5 teams) gave off a holier than thou vibe. One dude was super chill but everyone else had a stick up you know where.The environments were small open rooms where developers had computers lined next to each other. You would bump elbows with each other. It was very messy and part of me wondered how anything got done being so close to meeting rooms and sales pits with all the noise. Cubicles looked appealing compared to this and that’s saying something. I did not aspire to be a code monkey.The interviews had ridiculous questions like “why is a manhole cover round?” or “why does a tennis ball have felt?”. The joke of an answer I gave to the first was that it’s so the TMNT can throw them like frisbees. That was not well received.I got offers from 3 of the teams ultimately. The pay was really terrible and the hours were long for intern work. I took a job working remotely for a local company instead that paid me 70k/yr while I finished my studies.I’m glad the author had a positive experience and things have changed over the last 10 years.