Month: August 2018

As part of our summer curriculum, we have the NYC Tech Immersion class, which is a blend of guest lectures, company visits and Stern solution group project. “What does this have to do with the title of this blog?”, you might have asked. Well, Marcus and the trading game were my favorite sessions during our visit to Goldman Sachs in Jersey City on Friday August 3^rd as part of our class.

Before the visit I didn’t quite know what to expect besides the fact that GS is in the finance industry and that this was going to be one of the longer company visits (4 hours). Our afternoon started with a welcome note from Andrew Trout, the managing director of Human Capital Management, giving an overview of engineering at GS: 25% of the total global workforce and the mantra “challenge the status quo”. Then Sinead Strain from the FICC technology team talked to us about Marquee – the digital storefront for Goldman’s security division, and all the valuable lessons learned through the process of building Marquee, such as figuring out the proper business model, understanding the user persona and focusing on KPIs while creating the product.

Next we had Regina Lerit from the digital finance technology team talking to us about Marcus – their consumer banking product launched just a few years ago. Regina shared the growth story of Marcus with us, from the initial customer research, to the ideation and development of its MVP – personal loan platform, to its growth strategy. She even quizzed us about the name ‘Marcus’ and explained why this name was chosen. My favorite part of Regina’s presentation though, was how she explained the traditional waterfall vs. the agile framework of project development. She used our classmates sitting at a table as an example of multiple participants on the team and described the workflow of how they would improve the design of a water bottle had they been using waterfall vs agile methodology. The explanation was very clear and easily relatable. I think I am going to use the same way to explain the two frameworks in the future.

By this time, our class started to be a bit tired from all the presentations on a Friday afternoon: just in time for some highly interactive and fun activity – the trading game. Facilitated by two young and brilliant traders at GS, each group sitting at the table got to collectively decide the asset allocation among 4 stocks, the position we want to take (long vs short) and the opportunity to re-balance the allocation each quarter based on the macro-economic news and firm-specific news given in the simulated game. This got us all ignited and we even got to name our own team. From Fine-Ants, to Goldman Stacks, we got very creative. We had to discuss, calculate and decide how much we wanted to invest in each stock. We love to talk and our recent accounting and finance classes prepped us well. We had a lot of heated discussion on what the economic news meant, whether we should go long or short a company and how much to invest in each company. In the end every team was able to beat the average market return and the Goldman Stacks team made a whopping 60+% return over the course of 4 quarters (they had a CFA on their team so the other teams were playing with a competitive disadvantage)! This was before we learned the portfolio theory and importance of diversification in our finance class. I imagine our investment decisions will be different now.

The visit concluded with a Q&A panel with a few Stern Alumni on their experience at GS and a networking session with the panel. Everyone had a great time and we of course didn’t waste the amazing skyline view of Manhattan from Jersey City! (Photo credit: Isabel Izquierdo)

Everyone told me that my classmates would be one of the best parts of business school. While I was already very excited to be moving to New York and to make new friends, I have been blown away by everyone’s warmth and friendliness. Since our Tech MBA program in small (only 32 of us this year!) we all seemed to know each other by day 2. Additionally, we’re lucky to be spending the summer at Stern with students in the Fashion & Luxury MBA program, so we are able to meet, work with, and make friends with another group of individuals who have fairly different professional backgrounds from our own.

While our class tends to go to happy hour once or twice a week (the neighborhood around the campus has numerous options) here are few other ways I’ve gotten to meet my classmates outside of Kaufman Management Center:

• Finding new lunch spots: Exploration of the restaurants in the neighborhood is a great way to start appreciating our location and getting to know people. With the growing LunchTech scene (yes, I might coin that term), we seem to find new sign up deals every week from some new app that offers us $3 lunches. We are likely destroying that young startup’s customer acquisition costs, but eating good food along the way!
• Biking, running, and other outdoor pursuits: While it’s 92° outside today in NYC, and I won’t be setting foot outside besides to get to and from the subway, I’ve spent several Saturday mornings on long bike rides with classmates. As someone from New England, I was skeptical of NYC biking and outdoors, but it turns out there are some great ways to quickly bike out of the city onto beautiful back roads, and great running paths along the rivers. These adventures have provided a break from the noise of the city, and continue to be a great way to get to know my classmates – what better way to do it than while you’re all wearing spandex biking gear?

Dumpling tours: Yes, an actual class activity. It turns out that the leader of NYC’s top dumpling tour is a classmate. He’s a highly rated AirBnB experiences guide, and knows all the spots to hit in Chinatown. We’re lucky to have such diversely skilled classmates.

This year is flying by. I’m a solid 3 weeks into the Tech MBA at Stern, and it’s time for finals! It’s crazy to think that I’m already almost done with two of my classes.

Since classes are on my mind, I’ll use this first post to talk a bit about my initial impressions of the academic experience at Stern in the Tech MBA. Though I was thrilled to be coming back to school, I spent the months leading up to May dreading the idea of sitting in a lecture hall. At work I was that annoying coworker who would get up and start pacing around conference rooms 10 minutes into a meeting. How on earth would I sit still for hours of classes? Luckily, it turns out my fears were unfounded. Here are a few aspects of the program that have helped:

The classes are highly interactive – but not in a scary way. It was easy to let my mind wander during undergrad differential equations class. I can’t do that at Stern. The professors expect active participation, but not the type where you’re just regurgitating numbers or facts – they want us to share our experiences and opinions. Given the diversity of our class, this allows us to all draw from our range of backgrounds, experiences, and failures. This leads to reason #1 why I’ve been able to sit still in Stern classes: They are engaging and participatory in a way that makes you want to jump into the conversation.

Second, I quickly learned that our course content is highly relevant and thoughtful. In an era when issues such as workplace gender discrimination and corporate ethics are far from solved, I am glad to see us facing some of these issues head on. When I saw a class called “Leadership” on my schedule, I figured I was in for a lot of fluff. The first time Professor Nate Pettit opened his mouth however, I instantly knew my assumption was wrong. We don’t talk about how to give the punchiest PowerPoint presentation – instead, we focus on issues like barriers to communication, cultivating positive culture, leading effective change, and how to have difficult conversations (yes, he makes you practice!).

So that leads to reason #2 why I can sit through classes: the professors are astoundingly thoughtful about why material is important to creating strong leaders, and focus on content that resonates with our past experiences and future aspirations.

Lastly, Stern is an oasis away from a deluge of work emails. I am taking notes on paper for the first time in probably 10 years. I still can’t read my own handwriting, but putting away the laptop, putting my iPhone on do not disturb, and focusing on all the things that will further me professionally brings me to reason #3 I can sit through classes: I’m never going to get this opportunity again, and so far the program is filling the exact gaps I came here to address.