hmmm….

just a few minutes back i ran into chiru. First thing we realized was that we had hardly seen each other this term, despite it being a week after college started.

we don’t have any common courses. my room is in J block which is at a corner of IIMB (and close to the behind parking lot which means i don’t actually pass through the front). and no holidays during summer means i’ve become a kinda dayski… having spent all of two nights in the hostel so far… and i’ve eaten at the mess maybe 4 times (or is it 3?).

at this rate i’m sure i’ll forget half my batch BEFORE i pass out (though, given my memory that’s unlikely to happen)!! so much difference from first year…

9 more months of college life…. hmmm….

inverse bumping

it is not easy to reject a job. especially if it is from the world’s second largest bank. with a posting in london. a compensation which starts at the same level as the security guard at the bank but quickly grows to make me a millionaire within 5-6 years. and in an industry which is most coveted for most people in my college.

it’s not easy to accept a job, either. if the two months you spent at your “future workplace” were hell. Where you were made to do the jobs normally done by “class IV employees”. where the only thing that mattered to anyone was money. in an industry where everyone is grossly overpaid and hence one has to be lucky to survive. where the job, as i see it, is hardly intellectually stimulating. where you’re just another brick – no just a grain of sand making up a brick – in the wall. in a far-off land, where I don’t have too many friends (except a handful from my college who’ll be going there to – do what else? i-banking). where i have trouble getting the kind of food i like; where i managed to get rid of my addiction to caffeine because the coffee was so bad.

well, it has been hard to make this decision. have thought over it. talked to a few people around me. have faced extreme reactions – in both directions. well, if you’ve been following my blog over the last month, i think you’ve guessed right.

i am currently in the process of writing my “inverse bump” mail. i believe even when you’re saying “no”, there’s a nice way of doing it. hope to complete this mail in some time. early tomorrow morning, i’ll get it proofread by a few friends and send it on it’s way.

yet another glorious (??!!??) chapter in my life comes to a close. one that started with signing in a grubby yellow notebook saying “i accept the offer”. it had it’s highs and lows and stuff. was interesting, to say the least. well, it’ll end as soon as that mails leaves my mailbox a few hours from now.

hmmm… as usual, i’m not finding a good ending for this essay, so i guess i’ll stop here. and yeah, in a few days you can find articles on the investment banking myth and also a complete porter’s analysis on the investment banking industry.

last post from JP Morgan

i fetched probably the last round of coffee for my team an hour ago. two skinny lattes and two mochas. i’ll be in office for not more than an hour from now.

it is the end of one of the most interesting chapters of my life. a period of ten weeks where (as i’ve said before) my ‘learning density’ has been maximum. of course there have been those momeents of frustration, such as when i had to check if the ‘middle office’ had done it’s job properly. some moments of elation – climbing the white cliffs at the isle of wight and watching ‘les miseables’ (i still don’t know how to pronounce the name) and our first ever IIMB outing to canterbury. there have been moments of excitement at office – sometimes when the guy next to me has had me calculating stuff for him as he was closing a deal. when i read about some exotic structures. and sometimes it’s been utter boredom – my weeks 6 and 7 where i did nothign but check mail every minute for non-existent new mail.

yeah, i have an offer from JP Morgan. it’s in exotic derivatives trading. it’s going to be a hectic job: 7 am to 8 pm or so of intense action. as i’ve said before, probably the best job an investment bank could offer me.

i have the contract letter in my bag – literally. if i want the job, i need to sign it and send it back within 10 business days. several factors to consider. hopefully i should make an intelligent decision.

yeah, this also happens to be my last post from London. would be leaving for b’lore on sunday morning, via delhi. due to some screwed up planning, etc. it’ll take around 18 hours to hit b’lore.

london has been kinda nice. lousy weather. but some things are good though: the night-life, the public transport, the variety in entertainment, etc. some things have been lousy – the food (except for a few good meals here and there), the weather (again!!), the tiny roads, most shops closing by 7 pm, no free lunch at office, the coffee, etc.

a few closing notes about england…

capital: London
national animal: lion
national game: football? rugby? (surprisingly not too many people here like cricket – strange)
national obsession: the weather
national pastime: making out

guess thatzit for now. the next post will be from IIMB.

once again, cheers mates!

last day!!!

today is the last day of my internship at JP Morgan. 10 weeks seem to have just flown by. a few things i have to do today…

– finalize my fraud “project report” (i didn’t do any project here) and get it signed by my manager
– pain the HR people and make sure i have my offer letter in hand by the end of the day
– ask my manager to send a mail to the HR people saying that i haven’t taken any leave. i’ll get paid for those days i’ve NOT taken leave for
– clean out my desk and collect some useful stuff, if any, to take back home
– say goodbye to everyone here. i’ve brought a whole bunch of IIMB business cards for distribution!
– and i’m sure that my team here would like to have their money’s worth and i’ll have to do my today’s quota of choo tiya kaam

so i guess i’ll sign off now. i’ll be online till evening when i leave this place. and given that net connectivity at home is painfully slow, i guess i’ll follow a “no net” oplicy until both my comp and i have shifted to IIMB hostel.

cheers, mates!

PPO!!!

contrary to all my expectations, i was offered a job by JP Morgan today. i have been offered in the exotic derivatives trading team (different from what i’m doing right now).

so i do have to worry about my career options now! apparently i’ll have to make the decision within a month…

let’s see…

given up

as my boss is pushing back my review day after day (he’s told me “tomorrow” at least 4 times), i think it’s mostly going to be a “no”. and it’s not going to be communicated to me since in that case i’m going to stop putting fight.

keeping in mind that the probability of getting offered is really small, and even if i’ll be offered i won’t be taking it up (balls to bullet point), i’ve decided to give up and at least enjoy the rest of my stay here in London, rather than breaking my head about something non-existent.

waiting for my feedback….

i just want to go up to my boss and tell him how much this place sucks. just waiting for my review. there’s a small chance that i may still make it to an offer, which i can use to beautify my resume. that’s the only thing that is preventing me from going up and giving some honest feedback.

and it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that this place sucks. in fact, it takes even lesser intelligence to figure it out than it takes to price a vanilla swap using one of JP Morgan’s packages. so it is obvious that everyone else thinks this sucks. or at least they used to think so until they got sucked into the system.

the average person to enter JPM is a doofoo who’d have mugged his way through one of these crappy colleges in England. once he enters, he realizes that he is really lucky to be in such a high-paying job (yeah i know you must be thinking i’m freakin’ mad to say i don’t want such a high-paying job) and that by hook or by crook he must stay on here. if he starts cribbing about the system, given the place’s tika kobbu he won’t survive longer. and armed with a qualification which can, at best, fetch a call center job in a place like India (not sure what kind of a job it can fetch here in England), he can’t afford that. so he quietly understands and does his shitty work without cribbing. by the time his job is secure enough, he is part of the sucky system.

guess this has been going on for a few decades now! and the bank having existed for more than a hundred years, and having grown too fat to stand on its feet (though a series of arbit M&As that is – wonder how people trust this with their M&A when the investment bank couldn’t handle its own merger properly) it is impossible for anyone to change the system enough. totally pissing off.