Vacation, as one wise guy from cambridge used to say, is nothing similar to holidays...vacation is only meant for the vacating the premises! And its not a bad idea bearing in mind the amounts of money you have to spend on the accomodation in the UK...Its good that Warwick Uni is located in the WarwickFuckenShire, tho. If it were London, things would have been much worse...haha
Speaking about London, I gotta put some notes about my one week old experience there. I have attended a Certificate in Finance organized by the Citi there. Impressions: money, profits, bigger money, bigger profits, money, money, money...well, in the end, that is what the biggest bank in the world should be all about, right? This is how it looks like:
Yea, the glamour of the Canary Wharf. Funny little things: in the early morning you notice couples in nice Armani or Hugo Boss attire walking together holding hands and then suddenly separating with one of them walking towards the HSBC, or Bank of America and the other entering Citi. Or some other combinations anyway.
OK, these people earn BIG money. Your starting salary could be say £90.000. Then you get the bonus at the end of the year. Which could be well...a couple of millions! I know it sounds unreal and I guess it is a bit surreal. But again, the coin has two sides, obviously...These guys work 80 hours per week. With the smile. Looking good. Informal meetings with the clients excluded. They have adopted the company's principles in their personal lives: the client, the franchise, your colleagues and then maybe you. No wonder you get these questions in the job interview like 'Imagine, its your best friend's wedding next weekend and the client calls you on friday and wants the project by monday morning delivered to him by you personally to china. What do you do?' Well, the guys who work there seem not to be having such questions any more...
35 of us ('the most motivated students from the European reagion') - in essence top 10 uk universities' first and second years + 4 or 5 random italians - were accomodated in the Hilton Docklands (below, right) in the Deluxe rooms or Penthouse suites with the amazing Canary Wharf views just across the river (below, left). We would use the boat to get to the Canary Wharf in the morning...
The program itself was actually very interesting. For the majority of us mortals the concepts of M&A and Cash transactions vere not very familiar, so the Citi people tried to put it as simply as possible. That consisted of various case studies, little talks, excursions and last but not the least less formal chats over drinks or dinners with the main execs! I was actually very impressed of how many big and important people came to talk to us about what they do. I mean, you dont talk to people who for example have the biggest fixed income clients in the world every day! ^^ However, after the networking skills session, which was conducted by the HR people for us, all the atmosphere was overloaded with unhealthy wish of the students to get as many business cards as possible! For me, it was big fun. A few sips of wine and I was chatting with one of the Investment Bankers about his Lithuanian girlfriend and his next weekend's stag night in Kiev...haha I mean they are people like us, believe it or not, but as the guy put it 'its good that i met the gf after i started working here. now she has to take it or leave it'. another good qoute of the two days: 'yes, you can easily earn a Porsche during your first two years after graduation here. But you will be driving it from 4am to 6am, not more'.
Citi centre is an enormous building. We had an excursion to the trading floor which looks something like that:
Basically people are sitting in front of four screens and following the prices of the equities etc. For 11 hours a day. 15min break max. And they are considered the luckiest people around, because these are a very good working hours - only some 60 hours a week (excluding the informal meeting with the clients of course)! It is a very male-dominated area in the building, they swear and shout there. And they have approx £3mill of profit there every day. Interesting floor.Actually, it is amazing how little privacy all these people have in their work. There are either no walls or glass walls. Have a look at this staircase (the Citi building staircase and offices look really similar):
I mean it well might be embodied transperency of the company, however it seems that the 'im watching you' spirit is hounting there :) I guess you just have to get used to that anyway.
My procrastination is going very well indeed. But I guess that for such a blogger like myself its already a big achievement that i forced myself to write so much. Should get back to business as they say :) and maybe go to the gym....:)
xxxx
