In Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam, lawyer and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy talks about his internship at Goldman Sachs—an internship that he starts by saying was coveted because Goldman was "the most elite financial institution in America." "You didn't join Goldman as a summer intern for the $1,500-per-week paycheck, though that wasn't bad. Or for the possibility of a $65,000-a-year full-time offer for a 100-plus-hour-a-week job. You did it for the privilege of saying: 'I work at Goldman Sachs.'" But he soured on Goldman, in part because of things like the following incident:
The hallmark event at Goldman Sachs the summer I worked there wasn't a poker tournament on a lavish boat cruise followed by a debauched night of clubbing, as it had been at the more edgy firm where I'd worked the prior summer. Rather, it was "service day"—a day that involved dressing up in a T-shirt and shorts and then dedicating time to serving the community. Back in 2006, that involved planting trees in a garden in Harlem. The co-head of the group at the time was supposed to lead the way.
I welcomed the prospect of a full day spent at a park away from Goldman's cloistered offices. Yet when I showed up at the park in Harlem, very few of my colleagues seemed interested in … well, planting trees. The full-time analysts shared office gossip with the summer analysts. The vice presidents one-upped each other with war stories about investment deals. And, of course, the head of the group was nowhere to be found.
