I too joined Lehman as a graduate in 2007. My experience was different; I was based in the London office and was in a back-office role (IT Infrastructure). I also worked there as an intern in 2005-2006 (or "Industrial Placement" in Lehman-speak).
I have to say I enjoyed my time there. I primarily worked as a developer in a non-developer team, but was continually encouraged by management to pursue this work. This led to work with development teams in other regions, which really helped expand my horizons.
When I started making money from my website (independent of Lehman and unrelated to finance) and wanted to start it as a business, I had to approach legal and my division's MD for approval. They were completely supportive and again encouraged this work.
The downfall of Lehman was a sad but strangely exciting time for me. I remember staying up all night on September 14th watching the number of remote access sessions running, and suspected those users were doing the same as me and watching Bloomberg for an announcement. The following days and weeks saw a lot of interesting events take place, particularly from an infrastructure point of view. Barclays and Nomura (who bought different regions of the bank a few weeks apart) both rushed to connect their infrastructure to Lehman's, which resulted in some curious situations I'm still reluctant to mention publicly!
The most interesting part of it was the transition to Nomura for me. I stayed on there until mid-2010. It was a very different environment to Lehman. Our small team was given vastly expanded responsibilities to build out key services and infrastructure lost during the bankruptcy, and our team truly operated like a startup for about 9 months. We toiled tirelessly with teams in other regions to get services online before deadlines, and got a real sense of achievement out of it.
As things at the day-job settled down, my website became a startup and it was time to join that full time. Again, management was very supportive (incidentally the same management as at Lehman).
I look back on my time at Lehman/Nomura with fondness and truly believe my time there gave me experience I couldn't have received anywhere else.
I have to say I enjoyed my time there. I primarily worked as a developer in a non-developer team, but was continually encouraged by management to pursue this work. This led to work with development teams in other regions, which really helped expand my horizons.
When I started making money from my website (independent of Lehman and unrelated to finance) and wanted to start it as a business, I had to approach legal and my division's MD for approval. They were completely supportive and again encouraged this work.
The downfall of Lehman was a sad but strangely exciting time for me. I remember staying up all night on September 14th watching the number of remote access sessions running, and suspected those users were doing the same as me and watching Bloomberg for an announcement. The following days and weeks saw a lot of interesting events take place, particularly from an infrastructure point of view. Barclays and Nomura (who bought different regions of the bank a few weeks apart) both rushed to connect their infrastructure to Lehman's, which resulted in some curious situations I'm still reluctant to mention publicly!
The most interesting part of it was the transition to Nomura for me. I stayed on there until mid-2010. It was a very different environment to Lehman. Our small team was given vastly expanded responsibilities to build out key services and infrastructure lost during the bankruptcy, and our team truly operated like a startup for about 9 months. We toiled tirelessly with teams in other regions to get services online before deadlines, and got a real sense of achievement out of it.
As things at the day-job settled down, my website became a startup and it was time to join that full time. Again, management was very supportive (incidentally the same management as at Lehman).
I look back on my time at Lehman/Nomura with fondness and truly believe my time there gave me experience I couldn't have received anywhere else.