Activision Blizzard: A Day In The Life of a Sound Engineering Intern

Think about your favorite video game: the graphics, the sound effects, the user experience — each part of your favorite game has been carefully crafted by an engineer, designer, or coder so that you can have the most immersive experience possible. These are just some of the roles that you could work in at Activision Blizzard, a Fortune 100 company and producer of some of the most prominent video games in the world.  From Candy Crush to Call of Duty, Activision Blizzard is a frontrunner in the video game market. In addition to providing an opportunity for you to make an impact on a game played by millions of users, a role at Activision Blizzard will also offer engaging and challenging projects, empower you with creative freedom, and help advance your professional career and network. Sam Markowitz ‘21 had such an opportunity as a virtual Audio Engineering Intern at Activision Blizzard for the Infinity Ward team this summer.  Keep reading to see what your day could look like if you were to intern for Activision Blizzard as well!

My typical workday at Activision Blizzard is definitely unique. As a result of COVID-19, I was unfortunately unable to move to California to conduct my internship in person. As someone who lives on the East Coast, this meant that I would be working with a three-hour time difference. Activision was very understanding of this obstacle and allowed me a high degree of flexibility in my workday. I personally like to be on the same track as everyone else, so I decided for myself that I would work from 12:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. EST, which worked out really great as it meant that I could be in sync with everyone at Activision, who were working from 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. PT and not work too late into the night.

I like to start my workday by catching up with emails and Slack messages. I check to see if I was assigned any short-term assignments by my managers before starting work on my long-term summer project. One thing I loved about my long-term project is that my manager designed it so that I would be able to work on it in its entirety and see my own vision come to fruition. Activision believes in empowering its interns by giving them projects that they will see from start to finish. I was also able to get feedback on my project from my fellow interns and coworkers. My experience at Activision has given me the skills needed to successfully create and implement a vision for a product and user experience.

Throughout my late “morning”, or in my case, afternoon, I have multiple check-in meetings with my team and other interns. I sometimes have one-on-one meetings with my managers in which they check in on my work and offer me valuable feedback and advice. My managers, being extremely invested in my internship experience, want to make sure that I am getting the experience that I hoped for.

I also have scheduled meetings with many different people on Activision’s audio team, which includes the audio design team, who work on creating the sound experience of a game, and the audio programming team, who is in charge of creating and adjusting the tools that audio designers use. I am on the audio programming team, which means my projects consist of me adding new features to Activision Blizzard pre-existing programs. Essentially, if Activision Blizzard’s programs are a video game, my job is to continuously update the video game with brand new features designed to improve the video game’s function. I really like this aspect of my work, as it feels like I am contributing to something that is always evolving. Since my role relies on the rest of the team, it’s super important that I meet with everyone else working on the game to make sure we are all in agreement. Plus, meeting with other teams such as the audio design team allows me to learn more about other roles at Activision Blizzard.

My last meeting prior to lunch is one with all of the programmers at Activision Blizzard in which we update each other on our respective projects and exchange ideas with one another. These meetings give me the opportunity to collaborate with so many creative minds and get valuable advice on my projects. Moreover, since we are working to create an immersive experience for a user, it is really great to be able to check with each other to ensure that we are all following the same vision for the final product.

Of course, I am not in meetings all day — in between my afternoon meetings, I tend to make functional additions to my projects. Moreover, I add hard lines of code to my programs that I had theoretically designed beforehand. Getting my coding done prior to lunch opens my post-lunch work schedule to rigorous testing and revision of my code and allows me to enjoy my lunch break feeling productive and relatively stress-free.

Normally around 3:30 p.m. we take a break for lunch. Since the program was virtual this year, I get to prepare my favorite lunch at home, typically either a turkey avocado club or a quesadilla! Then, I jump back onto Zoom and catch up with my friends from the internship. To make sure we were able to meet other interns, Activision Blizzard created small pods so we could get to know each other a bit better. Each week, we compete in new challenges with our pods at intern events, like trivia or a virtual escape room, where we have to solve puzzles faster than the other teams. My pod and I got pretty close during the internship, so we try to hang out over lunch. The virtual internship program at Activision Blizzard created an environment where I made real friendships with other interns and the adults working around me. 

After lunch, once I get back to my desk, I sign on to our guest speaker series. Today our speaker is Tony Hawk who came to Activision Blizzard to talk about his new game. The speaker series is a great opportunity to talk to the visionaries behind Activision Blizzard’s products or the celebrities that are involved in the process of making them. Normally, when there’s no speaker, interns use this time slot to collaborate across different parts of the company for feedback on their designs. Similar to our morning check-ins, after lunch I’m able to talk to different functions.  The main difference is my afternoon meetings are normally an opportunity for feedback on my work. Because each game is an artist’s attempt to create an immersive experience, I know I need to speak with people from across the game’s development team about every feature I make. This is my chance to get to hear what they have to say and to give designers and creators opportunities to give me feedback. There are so many opportunities at Activision Blizzard to work with people across the company, and every day the interns get access to incredible creators. After these meetings, I’ll implement the changes that we talked about in our meetings so I can take into account the new perspectives that I got during my conversations. 

As the day comes to a close, I take a moment to look back over the work that I’ve done over the course of the day. I finish my day by running final tests to check my progress. With the results, I can see clearly which projects I’m happy with and which I’d like to work even more on tomorrow. As the clock nears 8:00 p.m. (or 5:00 p.m. PT), I write myself a note reminding me what my goals for the next day are. I close my computer ready to dive back into my projects in the morning! 

Join Us

Each year, more than 400 million people around the world play an Activision Blizzard game. Games like Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and CandyCrush are the most famous, but there are many more in progress that need enthusiastic designers to perfect them.

Activision Blizzard makes its creators' visions come to life in an immersive work environment. And, they’re willing to put in the work to make sure those creators are able to do their best work. For me, the virtual internship is a testament to the company’s supportive culture--when plans for an in-person internship were wiped out by the virus, managers, administrators, designers, and more came together to put together an incredible program. Although we are a worldwide company that produces games for millions of people, we are a tight-knit collaborative community that always supports each other.

My experience with Activision Blizzard showed me one thing: No matter what department you work in, the company has your back. After my internship experience, I decided to stay with Activision Blizzard this fall. There’s no place where I’d rather explore my interests and further my career.

Capital One: A Day in the Life of a Business Analyst

Want a variety of experiences in one job? As a Business Analyst at Capital One you’ll have the opportunity to explore a variety of different functions and teams throughout the two-year Analyst Development Program. Keep reading to learn more about Nick Karnovsky’s ’19 typical day as a Business Analyst at Capital One, a Fortune 100 company with over 90 million consumers!

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At Capital One, we’re building a leading information-based technology company

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I begin my day by hopping on the Metro, DC’s subway system, for a short ride to Capital One’s headquarters right outside the District in McLean, Virginia. I love starting my day with the Metro: the trip gives me a chance to listen to a podcast and unwind before I begin my day. I normally make it to the office around 9.a.m., but I know plenty of people who have a slightly earlier or later schedule. Capital One’s tech culture allows for some flexibility in my workday as long as I’m still able to finish all of my projects.

Once I’m at my desk I’ll typically check a few emails before we do our morning stand-ups. These morning stand-ups, as we call them, allow my managers and direct teammates to talk about our daily priorities. Capital One embraces a collaborative, communicative way of work, and I’ve found that our morning stand ups frame the day with these values. By the time I’ve checked my emails, settled into the office and met with my team it’s probably around 10 a.m. I might go into the kitchen and grab a coffee or a snack (free, of course!) and jump into my individual work.

While my work will vary based on the team, typically it does have a strong analytical component. The project I’m currently working on requires a lot of Python, and while I did take CS50, I’m no coding expert! Since I’m not super familiar with Python, I’ve been working closely with some of the data science partners. Even though I have needed to learn some Python for this project, there are plenty of tools and resources available to brush up on my coding skills, so learning this skill actually is not overwhelming.

After completing my basic analytical work I will typically take my key insights and distill them into a couple PowerPoint slides. This is where strong storytelling is necessary, since I have to translate relatively complex analysis and assumptions into a digestible format for someone who hasn’t been working on the project at the same level of detail. Being a business analyst is straddling these two skill sets of being able to derive insights and use them to tell a story. So, while specific projects will change, you will have opportunities to develop quantitative and interpersonal skills.

Being a business analyst is straddling these two skill sets of being able to derive insights and use them to tell a story.

By this time it’s normally around 1 p.m. when I’ll head down to the Cafe to grab lunch with other colleagues. The Analyst Development Program alone has around 200 people in it, so I’ll always have someone to eat and hang out with. I typically eat downstairs at the Capital One Cafe with the other recent grads, where you can get anything from a burrito bowl to Ethiopian food or a good slice of pizza. We’ll typically chat and unwind for our 30-minute lunch break, but if we have extra time we might hang out and play a quick game of ping pong before heading back upstairs to work.

Once I get back to my desk it’s time to start heading to my afternoon meetings. I will usually first have my partner team meeting. The partner team meetings are an opportunity for me as a Business Analyst to have conversations directly with senior leadership about my project. For most projects, we are thinking about the strategy for all the steps of the process: from how we create a new product to how we market and launch it. Having that face time with partners across various functions of Capital One allows me to meet senior leadership and also learn how they think about strategy for the company. After partner team meetings, I’ll probably meet with my direct manager and some coworkers to start brainstorming how to approach different analyses that we need to finish. Everyone at Capital One looks forward to these sessions — they are a space where we can have banter and healthy debate about the different ways to approach these complex models. The assumptions of the model, what we should highlight, and what’s important are the types of big picture questions we ponder during these sessions.

Having that face time with partners across various functions of Capital One allows me to meet senior leadership and also learn how they think about strategy for the company.

It's nearing 5 p.m. and my meetings have just wrapped up. I close the day by finishing any work and catch up on emails that I may have missed throughout the day. People may ask for specific data points or have questions about an analysis I worked on, so I will make sure to respond to those requests before the day ends. Around 5:30 I head out, hopping on the Metro with some other analysts on our way to relax at a happy hour or restaurant in the District.

Join Us

One in three United States residents have a Capital One credit card. But Capital One isn’t just a credit card company. Dedicated to creating their own programming and technology, Capital One is at the intersection of groundbreaking infrastructure in both finance and technology. Thus, the question isn’t what you can do at Capital One, but rather how you want to do it. From coding in Python to working on internal strategy cases, I’ve found that every possible opportunity is available.

The question isn’t what you can do at Capital One, but rather how you want to do it. From coding in Python to working on internal strategy cases, I’ve found that every possible opportunity is available.

The Analyst Development Program (ADP) takes advantage of the diversity of experiences in Capital One by rotating each analyst through three functions in two years. At each function, Analysts work with a new team and learn a different skill set that increases the breadth of work experience without ever leaving Capital One. The transition to different roles is made easier by the huge support system for the APD. There is also a strong Harvard presence, so it has been easy for me to connect with more senior coworkers.

But while the APD is what brings analysts to Capital One, the Capital One culture is what keeps them there. Capital One is a 50,000+ person company, but no matter which campus you are on the Capital One culture is pervasive. Regardless of the function you are working in, the tech-like casual culture and collaboration remains present. It is always easy to ask for help, and you aren’t expected to know everything immediately. My experience at Capital One has been incredible — I’ve met so many talented, driven people and I cannot wait to see where the role leads me next.

Interested in working for Capital One?

Click here to apply!

Bank of America: Day in The Life of an Investment Banking Analyst

Curious about a career in investment banking after graduation? Hear about the day-to-day experience of Inhwa Chi, a second year Investment Banking Analyst at Bank of America, which is one of the top bulge bracket banks in the country.

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My workday starts at around 9 a.m. as I step into the Bank of America Midtown office in New York City – the iconic glass skyscraper located at One Bryant Park. But beyond that bit of consistency, my day can vary a lot depending on what deals I’m on.

I quickly settle at my desk and check some emails from the night before. My VP has sent me comments, which could range from a quick model change to a request to make a new PowerPoint slide on the recent revenue decline of our client company. I’m a second year Analyst in the Financial Sponsors Group, so we assist with financing transactions that Private Equity companies or the portfolio companies they own get into. On an average day, I may be staffed on three to four live deals, and I create the materials for the process the client is involved in. For instance, I may have to spend a lot of time doing due diligence and modeling to prepare for a large live leveraged buyout transaction.

On an average day, I may be staffed on three to four live deals, and I create the materials for the process the client is involved in.

Today, as I work on those materials, the client sends us an updated model on a large transaction that is going to go live in two weeks. I have to prioritize that. Juggling these tasks around, it’s a big game of organization, and time really flies - sometimes I look at the clock and it’s already 2 p.m. On those days, I quickly grab lunch, which might be my leftover Seamless bulk order from the night before, or a bowl at a nearby to-go place. I eat at my desk as I continue working away, finally turning in the model for more comments at 4 p.m., and I take my coffee break in our cafe.

Other days, I finish my work pretty quick and I’m either waiting for my VP’s comments or for a client to get back to me. That’s when I take coffee breaks outside with some other analysts. Since we’re right by Bryant Park, it’s nice to have coffee outside in the park and take advantage of the changes in scenery all-year round – from people ice skating in the winters to hanging out in “The Porch” in the summers. Contrary to popular belief about investment banking, there are lots of breaks in between if you’re not on a live deal. I get a ping from my VP with more comments and head back to the office. I work on the comments, then he sends more my way. With each iteration, the model stands more robust and insightful.

It’s 5:30 p.m.: the most important time of the day. All of the juniors round up and debate about what dinner is going to be. Healthy or not healthy? Will it be Italian? Or Chinese tonight? After settling on our choice, we order on Seamless, and Bank of America pays for the order (that’s why we buy in bulk for lunch the following day!). We take up a free conference room and talk about what we’re working on and what our weekend plans are.

All of my colleagues are down-to-earth. I could tell the culture would be like this just from the Bank of America interview, where the questions were more about my background and interests rather than existing technical knowledge. The conference room is filled with smart and devoted workers who also know that when it’s time to play, it’s time to play. We may be preparing for our group’s annual holiday traditions, the summer party, or just coordinating our next happy hours.

I could tell the culture would be like this just from the Bank of America interview, where the questions were more about my background and interests rather than existing technical knowledge.

My VP pings me: he wants me to put together a diligence list by tomorrow, so I carefully think about the questions I want to ask about this model to understand how to get more comfortable with the investment. I think about how much I have learned about business. Especially because of my group, I get to see what makes a great company and how to think critically about a business from a risk perspective. I don’t know where else I would have gotten this kind of experience.

It’s 10 p.m. — sometimes on time-sensitive deals, this means I have another half day of work. But luckily, tonight is an early night. I hail a Yellow Cab to my apartment as my coworkers call Ubers. When I finally get home, I send the list to my VP to review. At 11 p.m., my VP sends another email with the comments for tomorrow, but I’ll wait until tomorrow morning to check it out. We’re one step closer to closing a deal that will headline in the news.

Grow with Us

Finance is not about how good you are at numbers. It’s about picking up a new language: what are the different types of debt? What does it mean to value a company, and how are you put a purchase price on it? There are so many different new terms and concepts that may be daunting at first, especially because there are analysts from Wharton or other undergraduate business schools who are already familiar with this accounting language. But supported by the strong Harvard network at Bank of America, I have learned and grown immensely.

This network was one of the main reasons why I ended up here and why I can clearly see a path here going forward. There are two Harvard recruiting captains who are both very senior, and they care a ton about the internship program and getting great Harvard students. They put a lot of effort into getting close to the interns and supporting them. I had a mentor who walked me through my superday, the actual internship, group placement - all parts throughout my time here. She constantly reached out to me to check up on me, and we would have great conversations. If you’re a Harvard student, the existing alumni network at Bank of America will make sure you’re in a great spot.

If you’re a Harvard student, the existing alumni network at Bank of America will make sure you’re in a great spot.

In the past, a lot of the value-add for us to clients was always what information we had and whether we had more expertise about the industry as compared to other banks. However, we’re living in an age when information is readily available, so clients now assess us based on what relationships we have and whether they can trust us throughout the process. With Bank of America’s extensive network of investors and executives, we can connect our clients with the right people to make great, impactful deals happen. All from the top of our glass building in the heart of Manhattan.