Ciao everyone! I’m Nilabha Saha, a rising fourth year B. Tech. student in the Computer Science and Engineering department here at IITB. I’m pursuing a double minor in Mathematics, and in Statistics & Informatics, along with a Honours in CSE. Furthermore, I am also pursuing an integrated dual degree with the Mathematics department.
I have served as the manager of the Cyber Security Community (CSeC) last year and as a SARC Web Coordinator during my sophomore year. At present, I’m a volunteer at the Maths and Physics (MnP) Club.
The Internship and My Pursuit of It:
I had decided to do a research internship one year and a corporate internship another year to get a taste of both worlds. I had already done my research internship last year at EPFL, so it was my time to check out a corporate internship this year.
Quantitative finance looked like a lucrative field, not just because of the high remuneration involved, but also because of the intellectual challenges the job description proposed. This is what drew me to look for internship opportunities in quantitative finance, and that’s how I ended up bagging an internship with Tower Research Capital with the North Moore team.
This internship was unique in the sense that it offered to expose us to both Quant Dev and Quant Research. To add another potion to the mix, the location of the internship was set in London, a historic city I always wanted to visit!
Preparation for the Internship:
I have a strange internship preparation story. Now, quantitative finance firms usually test on four topics: probability, brainteasers, DSA/CP, and generic numerical skills. After postponing my preparation for the four topics above for a long time, I finally started preparing just two days before the tests began. However, I did find concerted efforts for two days to suffice for preparing for three of the above topics, barring DSA/CP, for which I did not explicitly prepare but instead just relied on my brain to function during the test (this is a mighty risk which I absolutely do not advise anyone to take). Surprisingly, TRC asked us questions even from systems topics (OS, Computer Networks, Computer Architecture, etc.), but thankfully, I remembered enough (via courses, and via having studied OS out of my own interest back then) to be able to answer them.
Interview Process:
The interview process involved being asked questions from probability, brainteasers, DSA and systems (including system design). However, they also made it a point to ask me questions from the projects I had mentioned in my résumé. Clearly, it’s very important to ensure that one is on top of whatever projects they’ve mentioned in their résumé, else it reflects poorly on them during the interview.
The Work Experience:
The work experience was quite unique! I was given two separate projects: the first one being more dev-oriented and the second one being more quant research oriented. This allowed me to experience both the profiles and cast away any false preconceptions I had about the respective profiles. Moreover, I got to witness the confluence of development and quantitative research ideas and this made the whole experience altogether very fun and instructive!
The projects were very hands-on, and I actually witnessed my dev project go live into production and witnessed how it helped increase the company’s resources usage efficiency, lower the company’s costs, and helped uncover critical points in the pipeline which were causing major inefficiencies. The feeling of watching your project being actually pushed to production and witnessing how it’s actually making a major difference is an altogether different feeling!
Moving to a Different City:
The exciting news was that I’d be stationed in London; the challenging news was that I’d be stationed in London.
I spent the first two days of my stay (when my work had not commenced) to figure out the grocery shops and the essential stores around me because I knew that my work days might not let me explore these easily. After this initial reconnaissance, London became a city I felt very comfortable in and the “challenge” of being in an unknown land far away vanished.
London has multiple things to offer to its visitors: museums, parks, pubs, cathedrals, bridges, and whatnot! Cambridge and Bletchley Park were a quick train ride away. The Greenwich Royal Observatory (which also houses the Prime Meridian) was a quick tube ride away. You could attend concerts by international artists in London; I attended those of Taylor Swift, Green Day, and Hozier. London also houses multiple theatre performances which are absolute true masterpieces of art which no amount of praise can ever describe (for those looking for a recommendation, Hadestown was my favourite play).
Challenges during the Internship:
My team was a global team, having offices in London, India, and New York, among other cities. This raised a significant challenge: those of time zone differences.
During my project, I often had to interact with people who worked at a different time zone than mine. This often involved me having to stay back a little late to match the work time of someone in the New York office. Managing this time difference, and figuring out how to keep oneself occupied during the resultant downtime was a challenge I faced at first. With time, I learnt how to distribute my work across various threads of actions so I could make use of my time effectively.
My Two Cents on Doing Justice to an Internship:
It always helps if you’re interning in a field that you’re naturally interested in. This helps the internship feel less like prosaic drudgery and more like work you enjoy. An internship is not just an opportunity to show your worth to the company, but also an opportunity to push your boundaries and improve your productivity and interpersonal skills. In whichever company you join, you’ll find other employees who can pass down valuable skills and knowledge to you, so make sure to converse with them. They often offer perspectives and ideas very different from those usually found in academic environments.
Taking ownership and responsibility of your internship project, instead of just treating it as contractual work, goes a long way in keeping you focussed and interested in the project, thus helping you put your best efforts into it. After all, the final project would be the result of your hard work and efforts, and wouldn’t you want to come up with something you’d be proud of?
Overall, you’ll find the whole internship experience – from bagging an internship to seeing the end of it – to be a rich experience sprinkled with its own set of challenges and accomplishments, and irrespective of the outcome, you’d have come out as a more grown, matured, skilled, and productive individual.
