JP Morgan Chase & Co. (JPMC) is an American multinational financial services firm The company is one of the top leaders in investment banking, financial services for consumers and small businesses, commercial banking, financial transations processing, and asset management.

I was given this opportunity to intern at the company as part of the Corporate & Investment Banking (CIB), Markets Technology team. Since it is a financial services company at the end of the day, there is still some degree of confidentiality involved and so I am unable to share too in-depth about what I have done, but I will try my best!

Unlike my previous internships, this particular one had a curriculum where interns have to go through mandatory activities planned out by the HR team. This included a week long induction program at the start, multiple activities scattered throughout the weeks, and finally a closing ceromony to wrap up the internship.

The culture in JPMC is also vastly different from the experiences from my previous internships. There is definitely a strong emphasis on networking here, which I did not mind, but it did take some getting used to.

After the initial induction, I was finally introduced to the team which I would be working closely with.

Majority of the technology teams within the firm do adopt practices from both the Agile philosophy and Scrum framework, which was good news since I am already somewhat familiar with it.

A day-in-the-life for me would look something like this:

• Show up to work / start work from home
• Coding / learnings
• Seek help for any blockers
• Attending meetings

The project I was assigned to was almost new, and I had to work closely with the more senior team members within the team. It is essentially centered around an idea that the team came up with during an internal hackathon in 2022, an idea which is currently patent pending.

Before I started working on anything, the team was super helpful in ensuring that I understood the high-level business context of what we are doing, which I really appreciate as a new joiner.

While the project was mainly focused on frontend development, I had some opportunities to view and understand the workings of the backend, giving me a fuller picture of what I am working on and how it would tie in to the mission of the team.

What I did during my time here was essentially materialising that idea, and the POC was subsequently used to pitch to senior management. With the support from my manager, I was able to present some parts of it to both senior management and the business users, and was hugely relieved to see that it was well received by them.

Definitely learned a number of things during my time here, mostly soft skills but there are also some technical learnings as well!

I did not have much hands-on experience with Amazon Web Services (AWS) previously, and I was fortunate enough to be able to take the Cloud Practitioner course during my second week.

I also had the opportunity to experiment and implement state management with Redux.js, which was something that I have always wanted to try. I also received a little help from my colleagues with regards to coding best practices and conventions within the team.

The two biggest takeaways I had were in terms of improving my soft skills.

• Networking is key
• Autonomy and asking for help

The strong networking culture definitely did throw me off at the start. My initial understanding of networking in the workplace was one that is fake, forceful, and transactional. It does not have to be that way at all, and my time here definitely changed my mindset moving forward.

Here are some perspectives I gained from my conversations with fellow colleagues, the (super supportive) HR team, and friends with regards to networking:

• Do not approach someone purely with the intention of self-benefit
• Be genuine in trying to connect with them, and be curious about what they are doing
• Take, but also give. Add value to others just like how they added value to yourself
• It isn't always about work!

Here is an article by Forbes that explains it better.

Another thing I noticed during my time was that the team members were given a lot of autonomy, myself included. It was tough for the first one or two weeks. There were plenty of questions to ask but I was afraid of being seen as incompetent or troublesome. From my previous experiences, this was somewhat the norm in the tech industry.

While it is always difficult to ask for help, it will definitely get easier with practice, and people are mostly more helpful than what you make them up to be. The culture within my team definitely made it easier to do so.

Overall I would say this was a pretty enjoyable and insightful internship. It ended off on a good note and I was able to make some new friends along the way that I still keep in contact with.

During the initial induction, one of the speakers described the company this way - JP Morgan is a tech firm that does finance.

I was initially skeptical on the idea of working as a technologist in a financial services firm, as they have a reputation of being slow with a lot of red tape. There is some degree of truth to it, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the technology teams here do follow the tech industry practices really closely as well.

Thanks for reading, till next time 😄