Eight months at Morgan Stanley- Things I learnt in my Internship

Wait, what ? You might be thinking which internship lasts for eight months during college. Yes you’re right — none of them does!
I did both my Summer and Spring internship here (my friends might call it my mad love for MS!). Coming right away from college and transitioning into a young professional came with its own challenges and lessons. If I dive into the details of my entire experience of joining, orientation, the 4 core values (yes :p), project onboarding, full-time conversion interview, and everything else — I might end up writing a superrr long article(such enriching the experience has been, with its happy and unhappy paths!).

First things first — Selection Process at Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley hires freshers for Summer and Spring internships in these ways:

• On-campus college recruitment
• Morgan Stanley Campus Codeathon held once every year
• LinkedIn job posting
• Grace Hopper Conference resume database(only for women)

Interviews involve questions on DS, Algo, System Design, Operating System- normally asked in every interview.

So this post is more about what I learnt and experienced over my internships at MS, from a college student’s perspective. Things mentioned here focus on how to make the best of it in a fintech like Morgan Stanley, but applies to any other firm as well.

Everyday is an opportunity for growth

Starting from the first day, right from the orientation session, project assignment to the last day of project fair -I got to learn something new about the firm, team, technology or me! After meeting so many senior folks from various teams, you get to pick up something(both personal and professional) from each one of them. It’s important that you keep your mind open and take everything around you as a learning opportunity right from the first day till the last one.

Building relations is as important as building code

I have always believed that developing relations with people around you is crucial, and at Morgan Stanley it is extremely important. Coding a solution is much more about understanding a problem and figuring out the right design, than sitting at a corner and coding. Hence communication skills is a must here.
Apart from that, building relations is like building your own support network! I realized there were so many knowledgeable and experienced people out there- that I would want in my network, and guess what — they were very approachable too. That’s the best thing I find at Morgan- people are awesome and you never know how you can help each other. So meet and greet everyone you meet, anywhere in the building — be it corridor, canteen or even elevators!

Be far and wide

This is a continuation of the point above. Try to know people from outside your team, get a bit out of your comfort zone and never be hesitant to talk to new people or ask them anything. As a new joinee, you might not be able to realize the benefits but over time it helps to have contacts- both professionally and personally.
You might ask, “How can I know people outside of my team when all day the people I be with, is them?” First, Morgan has many events which give you the opportunity to network with people in the firm. Secondly, talk and reach out to people in case of issues instead of mailing and waiting for their replies. Also, talk with friends of your friends (your friends will be in different teams and strike up a conversation with their teammates when you encounter them). I didn’t have to go out and network with people, but I have this habit of pinging the concerned people and talking it out with them personally if they’re free. So I was working on front-end, and was facing an issue with an internal Morgan library. I mailed the concerned team, but someone advised me that a particular guy in that team was an expert and I should reach out to him. I booked a time with him, visited his desk and was able to get a solution very fast. This way, we got to know each other and what we work on! (network++)
There are many such interesting instances.

We are a service-based company, not product-based

Morgan Stanley is a financial services company which provides financial services, offering solutions to the world’s most important corporations, governments and institutions in more than 100 countries. They use software tools to conduct their businesses. So it’s not a product company.
How does that matter to us? Being service-based, at the end — serving the clients and making money for the firm is our primary focus. Hence, understanding the business problem is very important.

We build, fail, learn and repeat- Together!

There were many instances during the internship which made me realize that it was not about pushing my code and getting done but functioning together as a team. At the end of the day, it’s all about serving our customers through improving our product and service, through serving each other.
There were weekly sprint meetings, discussions on production issues faced during the week so others could learn from it and knowledge-share meetings where everyone talks ideas about the tools they think could help them to perform more efficiently or infra improvements on existing projects. I still remember there was production outage once, and the entire team remained glued to their seats, skipping meals until it was solved.
Over time, I learned that at Morgan, we were hungry for different perspectives, different opinions, and different ways to do things.

I was mentored, not managed

Though everyone is assigned a manager here, I never felt like being managed. Instead I felt, I had a mentor constantly helping me grow. Our 1-on-1s were meetings about me, meetings set to empower me to perform better and grow. I talked about problems I encountered and seek advice and feedback from him.
My team valued new ideas and I was given the freedom to design things my way (after proper discussion). During my internship, I was working on UI and I experimented with the UI features and how it should look and everyone — starting from my ED to my manager would listen and discuss it with me.

Ask and you shall receive

As I have mentioned at several places, communication is the key. Morgan Stanley has a flat hierarchy, which means you can simply approach anyone in case of advice/assistance.
In terms of work, just talk to your manager and ask for the kind of work you want and they’ll make sure you have it. The ownership that I’ve got for my work was overwhelming yet gleeful. I developed a web app from scratch during the Spring Internship and it came to be known as ‘Jinal’s product’!
So, be frank to talk about what you want and display your potential by talking confidently about it.

Software engineering is much more than coding

Once given the problem statement, rushing to code is so not the right thing to do. There are a few things which need to be done before actually coding the final implementation.
First is to figure out the right approach you should pursue. You might need to discuss your idea with some seniors and refactor the code before proceeding.
Coding is much like building something with lego blocks. Putting pieces together isn’t hard. The hard part is coming up with the right design blueprint.

Think, think, think… before you code!

As discussed above, design your approach, think it out in your head before actually starting to code. Ask the right questions before coming to an approach — why are you doing this? how is that going to benefit the end users? Sometimes you realize what you’re trying to do is just a nice-to-have but not a necessity.
Once you have confidence in your approach and have a clear idea about what code should go where, only then sit down and code. Rushing into coding does more harm than good. Just DON’T do that.

Come prepared(always). Do your homework!

Always be prepared before coming to a meeting or presentation. As a new joinee you would only be speaking at a few meetings like — sprint calls, expectation setting, project design discussions and finally demo of your product. It looks very unprofessional if you start babbling a few things here and there when asked to speak at your own meeting.
Meetings are expensive. It saves everyone’s time when you do your homework ahead of time.

And for the perks..

Enough of talking tech and professional communication! Apart from work, we had table tennis and foosball tables to chill. Also there are a lot of clubs here like Readers club(for the love of books!), Toastmasters(for debating), Yoga club, WIT(Women in Technology) and activities like volunteering as a part of GVM(Global Volunteering Month), fireside chats and leadership sessions with senior executives. So find your interests and I’m sure you’ll have fun.

Final Thoughts

Be it a pure tech firm or a fintech, I believe there exist ample learning opportunities everywhere as long as you’re inquisitive. We gotta remember this:

The world is full of people who all want the same thing, and you have to do a little something extra to make them remember you.

What I realized after my first 2 months was that people and culture matters a lot. I was lucky enough to have found some of the best people as my teammates, who made me grow and turn up with a smile and enthusiasm each day at work :)
The above lessons are written from the perspective of a girl taking her first steps into corporate culture, and attempts at making the best out of it.
Internship at Morgan Stanley, Mumbai was my first time away from home and I had come with new dreams to a new place. Everything was no longer a fantasy, it was real.
And I knew I wasn’t searching for something or somebody here. I was searching for me, who I was and who I wanted to be. Finding my voice wasn’t easy, but it sure was fun!