The air in the 60 Wall Street auditorium was ripe with the smell of cold brew as conversations buzzed among the summer interns. As I surveyed the room—a sea of side-parts perched on dark gray trimmings—the decision on where to sit had been made for me. Despite my being thirteen minutes early, only a few empty seats remained—all in back.
After settling in my seat, I took a sip of my Starbucks, then placed it on the floor below me. It was ninety-three degrees outside and felt about the same inside, but everyone’s suit jacket was still on. Conversations among neighboring interns were animated, with lots of hand gesturing and nervous laughter.
My buddy and former teammate, Derek, who had helped get me the job, had since left the bank. “It was time,” he had told me cryptically.
An outstretched hand emerged in my direction as I surveyed the auditorium. I looked to my left to identify its owner.
“Hi. I’m Zhe,” he said, nodding his head and smiling as we shook hands. “Zhe,” he repeated. “Like nin-JA.” He had answered the question that my face was asking.
“Bill,” I said. I tried to think of something cool to say that had my name in it but came up empty.
“Summer associate?” he asked. I nodded. “Me too.” Zhe’s head nodding picked up steam, and his grin transformed into a full-blown smile. He raised his iced coffee to his mouth and took a sip.
The incoming Deutsche Bank intern class was comprised of analysts who had just finished their junior years of college and associates who had just finished their first years of business school.
I checked my watch—7:50 a.m.
“My apologies,” Zhe said as his right elbow inadvertently nudged my left arm. In his lap, Zhe furiously scribbled something, then turned the page of his notebook to a blank sheet and continued writing. The internship hadn’t even officially started and I was already behind.
“What school are you studying at?” Zhe asked after closing his notebook.
“Columbia. Here in the city,” I said.
“Columbia! Are you in the value-investing program?”3
“No,” I responded. Zhe looked deflated.
“But I have a friend—”
“Your friend is in it?” Zhe said with restored hope.
“Yeah, a friend of a friend, I think, just got accepted into it,” I said. Zhe nodded. “How about you? What school are you at?” I picked up my Starbucks and re-caffeinated.
“University of Chicago. We have three students in internship here. What are your summer rotations?”
“FIG and Industrials,” I said. “You?”
“TMT and leveraged finance. TMT is my number-one choice though,” Zhe said. I liked that he pronounced the word “finance” with a long “i,” and not the douchey way, “fuh-NANCE.”
“You work in tech before business school?” I asked.
“I was at Apple working on the DevOps engineering team, helping with the deployment and maintenance of our Hadoop and NoSQL clusters. Were you working in anything related to FIG or Industrials before school?”
“I was a hockey player.”
“Oh! Very non-traditional background. Hockey,” Zhe said, readjusting his body toward me. “With the stick and ices?”
“Exactly.”
“Did you play in the NFL?”
“Never made it to the NFL. Played over in Europe for a few years.”
“Is that good?”
Before having to explain to Zhe that I was about as close to making it to the NFL as I was to playing in the NHL, a sturdy woman approached the stage. Zhe reopened his notebook and removed a pen from his inside jacket pocket. The woman on stage tapped the microphone twice, then began speaking, officially signifying the beginning of my investment banking career.
Now, some of you might be wondering why I was considering joining an investment bank after how I described the recruiting process. Others might be curious as to what exactly Hadoop and NoSQL clusters were. I will attempt to answer one of those questions.
After stopping hockey three years prior, I was at a loss, moving back into my parents’ apartment at twenty-seven years old. Without hockey, there was a huge void I had never experienced in my life, so after months of deep thought and watching television, I decided to return to school to spend six figures trying to fill that void. I knew I missed competing, but the answer for choosing a career didn’t come easily. But I had to pick something, and quick, since internship recruiting started the second week of business school. From what I understood, investment banking attracted smart, competitive individuals—often younger people who, like myself, weren’t certain what they wanted to do in the long-run but saw this as a good way to keep moving forward. Plus, my parents had both done investment banking and part of me wanted to prove that I could do what they did. These might not be great reasons to do something, but without really knowing what I wanted to do, they were enough to give it a shot.
Nearly every banker I met through recruiting said that the first couple years could take a toll on one’s personal life. I had no girlfriend, and I hung out with the same two friends from college every weekend. Sure, the soup kitchen in Harlem I worked at on Saturdays and the pediatric hospital where I did candy-striping on Sundays would probably miss me, but those were sacrifices I was willing to make.
And the internship was only a ten-week commitment. The goal was to secure a full-time offer at the end of the summer, at which point there would be plenty of time for reflection and more TV watching to determine if banking was the route to go. Offers could also be shopped and would increase one’s value in the second-year business school recruiting track.
“What an interesting day for you all to begin your internships here at Deutsche Bank,” the woman on stage began. Knowing nods of muted agreement filled the room.
“Incredible timing,” Zhe whispered to me as he made a mark in his notebook.
“Today marks not just a new chapter in your careers, but also the first career chapter for many of you. It also marks a seminal day in the history of Deutsche Bank, as you all know from today’s news release,” the woman continued.
As the introductory speech continued, I spotted a copy of the Wall Street Journal in Zhe’s briefcase. I pried open the folded-up copy of the paper just enough to read the front-page headline: “Deutsche Bank Appoints John Cryan as New CEO to Replace Jain, Fitschen.”
As I wondered what impact this change in management would have on me, if any, a woman from the compliance department was introduced to mild applause.
“I see a lot of the tops of your heads, so I’d ask that everyone put away your cell phones and give me your undivided attention.” I “liked” one more Instagram picture of a girl who didn’t know my name, then I slipped my phone in my pocket.
Alright, I ripped through a few more Instagram pictures then turned my attention to the compliance director.
“Which brings me to my list of no-no’s. No taking home price-sensitive information under any circumstances. Your managing director wants to go over a pitch book on a Saturday, so you decide to bring home a copy Friday night? I don’t think so. Don’t do it. Each group has its own supplies closet, so it’s okay to take home a pen or Post-its or an extra stapler, right? Or I’m out of paper at home so I’ll just take some from the printer at work. That’s no big deal, right? Wrong.” She paused and turned the page of her notes.
“Emails,” she continued. “Everyone, I’m sure, has heard of the New York Times test—only write in an email something you’d feel comfortable having published on the front page of the New York Times.” One should be so lucky to appear in the Times, let alone the front page. A moment passed as she slowly walked to the other side of the stage.
“And absolutely no attachments should be sent from your work email to your personal emails. This is automatically flagged, and you will be contacted by compliance. It’s not something you want to have to deal with. Here’s another one that recently came up: photocopying documents on work premises for an outside charity you’re involved with. We are big supporters of charities here at Deutsche Bank, and you will have ample opportunity to work with the many, diverse charitable causes we support, but do you think this is an example of something that is permissible?” She scanned the room. “I see a lot of heads shaking. Again, prime example of a no-no.”
Zhe was taking this down for the both of us. I leaned over toward him and said, “Think we can use the toilet paper at work if we ate breakfast at home?” Zhe considered it for a moment, consulting his notes, then shrugged.
“Understanding the regulations governing the lines of communication internally is vital for everyone in this room. There are strict rules against information that can be transferred between the public and private sides of the bank. For those of you joining the investment banking division, you’ll have access to proprietary information that is never to be shared with your colleagues in equity research, even if you’re covering different industries. As most of you probably know, this is the Chinese Wall that was put in place to prevent conflicts of interest within banks.” She took a sip of water. I’d heard of the Chinese Wall she was referring to, but there was no doubt that the most formidable Chinese Wall was the one I encountered in the front row of my corporate finance class that year.
“Pleading ignorance to any of these infractions will not absolve you, and be warned, the ramifications are severe.” She looked around the room one last time. “Good luck. We’re excited to have you all join the Deutsche Bank team on a day that marks an exciting, new chapter in the firm’s history. I’d now like to introduce our building’s chief of safety, Tom McNamara.”
Tom approached the stage. He wore a short-sleeved, button-down shirt and had a ring of keys hanging from the belt loop of his Wranglers. He removed his glasses from the breast pocket of his shirt, propped them on the bridge of his nose, and eyed his clipboard.
“I’ll keep my spiel short and sweet. Got issues with the HVAC system down here in the basement, trying to get resolved, but rest assured, the A/C is pumping on all the floors you’ll be on. Fire-safety protocol: we got two types of alarms, single and double action. If I do my job properly, and Lady Luck’s on our side, none of you will be pulling any fire alarms. In the event an alarm is triggered, there are two evacuation stairwells: A and B. Your floor will determine which one you use. Use precaution—back of the hand to the door and check for heat. Handle hot to the touch probably means trouble. Most importantly, if it’s smoky, any type of smoke, get the hell away from the door and check the alternative stairwell door. Smoky behind that one too, well….” McNamara pushed his glasses up to his forehead. “Don’t wanna be the first truck to arrive on the scene that day. I’ve been in fire safety almost thirty-five years, twenty with the FDNY. Bottom line, don’t try to be a hero. Let the professionals do their jobs.”
Tom was true to his word, keeping it short, but the same can’t be said of the next guy up from Global Banking, who droned on for half an hour, praising Deutsche Bank’s flat culture, after which he outlined the new management-reporting structure and how all of us had upwards of one hundred bosses, more or less.
“I’d like this to be interactive, so please ask any questions,” the man said. I’ve been with Deutsche Bank for almost two decades, over a decade as a senior managing director, so I have a lot of knowledge about the firm and its processes that can help you all.” Whether it was a collective decision among interns to deny this guy a chance to spout off his firm knowledge, or possibly the diuretic effect of the coffee we were drinking finally kicking in, no hands shot up. “Going once,” he said squinting his eyes and scanning the audience. “Twice…three times…well, my email is readily available, so feel free to ping me should questions come up. I’m certain they will.”
In one motion, I stood from my seat and kicked over my iced coffee onto Zhe’s briefcase. I would have gone ape-shit if it had happened to me. Zhe smiled.
“This happens,” he said, removing some napkins from his coffee-doused briefcase. “Here.” Zhe reached into his back pocket, removed his wallet, and handed me a Starbucks gift card. Zhe’s patience and grace dumbfounded me. That would have been enough to ruin my day, and quite possibly my entire summer, yet he found a way to reward me for my carelessness. I needed to stay close to him.
As we followed the mass of interns out of the auditorium and up the escalator to the lobby, I checked the piece of paper I had outlining where to report for my first rotation in the Industrials group: forty-fourth floor. There were typically two coverage groups on each floor.
“What floor you on?” I asked, hoping TMT might be the group that shared floor space with Industrials on forty-four.
“San Francisco,” he said. “Just here for orientation today. Tomorrow morning, they fly me to California for the summer.” We shook hands and parted ways.
Shit.
My ears popped as the elevator ascended the Wall Street skyscraper.
“Forty-fourth floor,” said the automated voice. Removing the newly-issued company ID card, I waved it in front of the small detector device. Click. I opened the glass double doors and was met with a rush of cool air to my face.
It may have been day one for interns, but it was another Monday for everyone else. Managing directors occupied the large offices on the perimeter of the square floor. I walked slowly around the interior square loop. Most of the MDs I spotted through their glass windows were having animated phone calls on speaker, or maybe they were talking to themselves. Some looked to be howling in laughter, others howling in rage. Cubicles, four deep, were arranged on the interior of the floor, though there was no telling what level of seniority the occupants of a given cube were, aside from making an educated guess based on the quantity/color of hair that could be seen popping above the sterile, gray separators. After further consideration, a better proxy of seniority may have been the number of deal toys4 arranged on the cubicle dividers. I took a full lap around the floor, noting that most of the bankers I saw were speaking into headsets with measured voices accented with pangs of panic.
I spotted my new home: cube 44-014. I sat in the swivel chair and stared at the two black monitors in front of me. Next to the keyboard was a packet labeled “Deutsche Bank Summer Internship Materials.”
“Is that EBITDAR or EBITDAX?” said a disembodied voice in a cube somewhere behind me. I was familiar with ‘EBITDA.’ But EBITDAR? EBITDAX? School was over.
“No, we need IBES consensus. Does the footnote show which brokers are excluded? Then fuckin’ figure something else out. I don’t know what to tell you,” said another voice.
“Why the fuck won’t this update?” said the guy in the cube behind me. He slapped his mouse on his desk a few times then picked up his headset and dialed a number.
“BAML banks the shit out of those guys,” said one of two guys as they walked by my cube.
“Memory insufficient to collate job?” said a pint-sized woman standing in front of one of the floor’s countless printers.
There was an intensity to the environment, like I had stepped onto the ice of a hockey game from the stands midway through the game, except I wasn’t sure what position I was playing, and my stick was the wrong curve. And suddenly it hit me: I wanted the full-time offer.
Throughout recruiting, the one line bankers had repeated was, “Once you get your internship, the full-time offer is yours to lose.” I didn’t want to lose it. Maybe it had something to do with wanting to feel that energy that radiated from those around me. Maybe not. It didn’t matter. I felt a passion on the floor, and even though it was more secondhand than my own, it was there.
Mine to lose.
I thought about the orientation speeches: “Don’t be a hero,” the fire safety chief said. “Don’t bring home pens or Post-its,” warned the compliance director. What derailed me in the interview process was trying to get creative, making a case for investing in a stock instead of taking the sure thing. I didn’t heed the advice I had been given prior to interviewing: “Don’t go off script.” Securing the full-time offer seemed a matter of not doing a bunch of things. Fall into line, and don’t stand out. Don’t give them a reason not to hire me. Like a steady, stay-at-home defenseman, going unnoticed meant you were playing well. I thought of the time-tested advice my first junior-hockey coach gave me before a game-deciding penalty shot: “Don’t fuck it up.”
I’d keep my head down, my headset on, and in ten weeks, the full-time job would be mine. At that point, I could make a judgment on what to do with it, but for now, “Don’t fuck it up,” I thought, as the surge of confidence raced through me and I powered on my computer and monitors.
An urgency ran through the maze of cubes on forty-four. Conversations, both on the phone and in person, were short, direct, and demanding: “Send me that real quick.” “Go get Joel real quick.” “Open that folder real quick.”
And apparently, the person who last occupied my cube shaved over the keyboard; the number of whiskers between the keys was staggering.
Before encountering my first stumbling block, which was figuring out my log-in credentials, my desk phone rang. I considered for a moment putting on the headset—it seemed to be the thing to do—but I decided against it since there was no headset. So I picked up the receiver.
“Hello? I said.
“Is this William?” asked the voice.
“Yes,” I said. “This is Bill.”
“Swing by my desk.” Click.
The log-in screen was now loaded on my computer monitor—Enter User ID. Since everyone on the floor was seated, I thought maybe if I stood up and lingered around my desk, the person who had called would recognize the lost intern and wave me over. I weaved slowly in and out of the maze of cubicles on the forty-fourth floor. Twice. Phones rang. Headsets were put on and ripped off. Keyboards chattered. But no one wrangled me in.
Returning to my cube, I eyed the digital display on my desk phone. Six minutes had passed since the call. I could already see the assessment of me at the end of the summer: “Next up: Keenan, William. Guy’s not punctual. Asked him to come by my desk on day one, took him ten minutes. Easy peasy. Axe him. Moving on….”
Maybe I could find a clue in the packet that had been left for me. Inside were colorful brochures of young bankers’ smiling faces—Asian, Indian, black, white, male, female—faces that bore little resemblance to the panicked faces that surrounded me. As I sifted through the propaganda, I found one sheet outlining day one’s schedule. The Industrials group-specific orientation started at 10:00 a.m., followed by a series of on-boarding training modules, including how to set-up our email; Microsoft, PowerPoint, and Excel best practices; FactSet training; and a host of compliance briefings. But alas, no seating chart. I looked at my desk phone—seven minutes had passed since I had been summoned.
Then I noticed the “call log” button. I hit it twice and identified the mystery caller—Greg Kim. Since the guy in the cube adjacent to mine was one of the few people not talking into a headset (though he was wearing headphones plugged into his computer), I sought his help. He had a slender frame, and thin, brittle hair. As I leaned back in my swivel chair to peek at his computer screen, I could hear DJ Khaled’s “All I Do is Win,” feat. T Pain, Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross, and Ludacris, blaring on his headphones. I tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned to me, staring for a moment with the music still thumping before finally removing an ear bud.
“What’s up?” he said, averting his attention from the series of colorful column-charts on his screen.
We introduced ourselves. “You know where Greg Kim sits?”
“Over in the corner, in front of that conference room,” he said.
I stood from my chair and looked in the direction he was pointing. “Thanks. He just called and asked—” I looked back, but the guy had turned his attention to his computer—the column-charts were gone, replaced by an array of pie charts. Both earbuds were in as he bobbed his head again, nearly imperceptibly, to the beat.
I adjusted my tie and walked to Greg Kim’s desk, feeling a sense of accomplishment for some reason, like figuring out where he sat was worth a degree of praise.
“Greg,” I said, extending my right hand. “Bill Keenan, sorry it took me a few minutes to find you.” Greg remained seated as we shook hands. His thin, pale pink tie with either a Windsor or half-Windsor knot (fuck if I know) was draped over his right shoulder. As if suddenly aware of it, he returned it to its normal position, where it then hung in front of his crisp, white Oxford button-down.
“How you feeling?” he asked, smiling at me, then returning his attention to his email inbox.
“Great,” I said. “Excited to get started.”
“Super,” Greg responded, elongating the u sound as he typed at his keyboard. “Here it is.” He double-clicked on an email. “So here’s the deal: DB has been working with a big energy company, about three billion in sales, called QRT—they do drilling, midstream, refining, everything. Three senior guys on their management team—CEO, CFO, and some other guy—recently decided to leave to start their own company. They’re still in the initial stages—looking to round out the rest of their team and finding investors. We’ve set up a bunch of meetings for them with some of the big private equity shops here—Greek God Capital, Lakecrest,” he looked back at the email open on his monitor, “and Carlview Partners.”
I nodded along, suddenly wishing I had brought a pen and piece of paper.
“These three guys liked what we did for them when they were at QRT, so we’ll have the inside track to lead all their deals once their new company gets off the ground. Should be some nice, big fees for the bank. That’s the good news,” he continued.
“Great news,” I chimed in.
“Bad news is the two guys from our Houston office in the Natural Resources group missed their flight here this morning.”
I shook my head, then felt Greg’s eyes zero in on me. “So I’m glad you said you’re feeling good. You’re filling in for them today and will be taking these guys around to the meetings.”
“Wow,” I said. We had been told during recruiting that you never knew what to expect each morning when you came to work—guess it wasn’t some BS line. “You coming with me?” I continued.
“I’m jammed on this sell-side that just blew up,” he said matter-of-factly.
I nodded like that made sense. “Who’s the other person coming?”
“Just you,” he said. “Know how to order a black car on our intranet?”
“No.”
“Get your company AmEx?”
“Not yet.”
“Your email setup and BlackBerry activated at least?”
My throat tightened. “We have group orientation at 10:00 a.m. Think someone explains all that to us then, so no, I can’t even log in to my computer yet and haven’t got my BlackBerry.”
Greg leaned back slowly in his chair then rocked forward, placing his right hand on the desk, tapping his index finger. After a few moments, he unplugged his BlackBerry from its charger and handed it to me. “Password is three, two, one, three, five. I’ll let the Houston guys know you have it. They’ll get in touch with you by emailing me. The VP down there is Jeff Sullivan, so any emails you see from him will be for you.”
A stream of sweat trickled down the center of my back. I was waiting for Greg to crack a smile and tell me this was some “welcome to banking” joke they’d pull each year on an intern.
“You know I’m just an intern, first day…I mean, part of the intern class….” I trailed off.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t mention any of that to the QRT guys. As far as they’re concerned, a full-time Deutsche Bank banker is taking them to these meetings, which will determine whether they can get their company funded or not.” He glanced at his computer monitor. “You better get moving. First meeting is in Midtown, Fifty-Seventh and Park Avenue, in forty-five minutes. Here’s Jeff’s number.” He handed me a piece of paper. “I’ll tell him to shoot you an email with some more info so keep the BlackBerry on you at all times.”
“The password…three, two, one, two, five, right?” I asked.
“Three five,” he said. “Three, two, one, three, five.” I wrote it down on the piece of paper with Jeff’s number on it and inhaled deeply.
“Breathe,” Greg said. I exhaled. “And smile. These guys know their stuff but will be nervous, so your job is to keep them calm and confident, regardless of how the meetings go. Keep it light, be yourself.”
“Anything I should bring?”
“A notebook, and not one of those spiral-bound ones—looks amateur. Find something leather-bound. Ask around if you don’t have one handy. Can also check the supply closet.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And last thing…most important: keep your receipts.”
“Receipts,” I echoed. “Got it.”
“If you don’t have them, you won’t get reimbursed.” Greg checked his watch. “You should get going. Probably gonna be fighting traffic up the FDR.”
As I walked toward the double-glass doors that opened to the elevator foyer, I saw the rest of the Industrials intern class shuffling into the forty-fourth-floor conference room.
“What’d that guy want?” asked one of the interns as we passed each other. The fact I was wearing a tie and still had my jacket on gave away my intern status. “Looked like a pretty intense convo for first day on the job.”
“He asked me to take this management team around to some private equity firms.” I regretted my answer the moment I finished speaking. I could see the disdain in my fellow intern’s eyes. Despite what we had been told, history had proven that not every intern would receive a full-time offer.
“What management team? Which PE shops?”
“Energy focused. Forget the names of the firms,” I said.
“Energy? So upstream, or midstream, or what?”
I nodded.
“Both?”
I nodded again. “Yeah, think so.”
“If they’re upstream guys, must be looking at acreage in the Utica and Marcellus shale. Nat gas can’t stay at these prices forever, but who knows.” I give him credit—in thirty seconds, my fellow intern had managed to rattle me even further, highlighting how ill-prepared I was to represent the firm in this task.
“Yeah, well, I gotta get going. I’ll see you in a bit,” I said.
“Enjoy chauffeuring them around,” he said as he disappeared into the large conference room.
In the elevator bank, I waited for one of the six elevators, periodically lifting my arms to see if the sweat had seeped through my undershirt, dress shirt, and suit jacket. The BlackBerry vibrated against the right side of my chest. I removed it from the inside pocket of my jacket and saw a new email, most likely from Jeff, the guy in Houston. “Please enter password,” instructed the tiny screen on the phone. So I did. “Incorrect password. Four attempts remain.” I re-entered the password. “Incorrect password. Three attempts remain.” One of the elevators dinged, alerting its arrival on the forty-fourth floor. I entered the empty elevator, simultaneously removing the crumpled piece of paper from my pocket on which I had written down the password. But the sweat from my hands had smudged the ink, and I couldn’t make out the final number.” A tidal wave of panic washed over me.
“Going up,” announced the automated elevator voice.