What is it like to work at a Fortune 500 company? We caught up with five Singapore American School alumni who currently work with some of the world’s largest corporations to find out.
Linda Sun (Class of 2015) investment bank analyst, Goldman Sachs
From balancing multiple leadership roles at SAS to training for multiple sports, her eight years at SAS helped prepare Linda Sun (class of 2015) for her current fast-paced work environment. After graduating from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in finance and management, she moved to New York to work as an investment bank analyst at Goldman Sachs. As an analyst, Sun’s roles and responsibilities primarily involve the execution of projects, including financial analysis, business due diligence, and assisting with client decks. She shares, “Goldman Sachs offers a plethora of opportunities, and I've been fortunate to take part in some of them, including a non-profit project, campus recruiting efforts, and talk series with leaders across all fields. These possibilities have made the job more interesting and allow me to meet new people and learn new things on a daily basis.” Sun offers three important pieces of advice that will help students or alumni hoping to enter the field of investment banking: 1. Meet many people from all different backgrounds or interests and stay in touch—you never know which door will open. 2. Your attitude is important. Everyone likes working with someone who makes the job easier or better. You will be able to produce higher quality deliverables when you have a positive mindset. 3. Take on challenges, even if it means staying up later at night. It will pay off in the long run.
69
JOURNEYS
S u m m e r
2 0 2 1
Craig Friske (Class of 1974)
senior software engineering manager, Rocket Software (IBM partner) Who knew that playing card games, chess, and brain teasers in elementary school were signs that Craig Friske (class of 1974) would one day become a senior software engineering manager at Rocket Software, a company with a long-standing partnership with IBM. After graduating from SAS, Friske attended California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, he accepted a job at a Control Data Corporation in Silicon Valley. As a manager of the Db2 Utilities team at Rocket Software, Friske’s main task is to oversee the engineers responsible for developing and servicing the utilities critical to the function of IBM’s mainframe database. He notes that his job can be quite stressful at times: “If an important, aggressive schedule must be met, then you can work lots of hours. If a bank system came down because of a bug in our code, it must be diagnosed in a timely manner. And these are very hard puzzles to solve!” Friske’s advice for students or alumni who want to enter the field of software engineering is to embrace hard challenges and classes. He typically hires employees with a bachelor’s degree or master’s degree in computer science. But that’s not all that it takes to be in this field, he emphasizes: “Focus on being a well-rounded person. The degree and a high GPA will get an interview, but my team is filled with people who care for each other and help each other. We have a company slogan we live by—a Rocketeer will never let another Rocketeer fail.”
