Neutrals instead of colors. An earlier alarm in the morning. A new coffee habit.
Wilma Ramony de Souza spent 14 years at JPMorgan and switched from the São Paulo branch to a New York City office in 2019 as a vice president. Though de Souza, 37, would often travel to New York during her years working in Brazil, she said the differences in office culture at 383 Madison Avenue still hit her hard when she arrived.
“How do you behave? How do you take calls? How do you talk to people? How do you go to meetings?” de Souza said, remembering how she would observe New York City employees.
She rose through the ranks of the bank during her time there, becoming an executive director by her 30s and eventually relocating to the London office, before deciding to quit last August. Business Insider has verified her employment and roles within the company. JPMorgan declined to comment.
Get in early
During her years in São Paulo, de Souza said she would arrive at the office around 9 am and leave around 6 pm, except on days when she’d be closing deals until the early morning hours. In New York, traders would usually arrive at the office by 7 am, and others would trickle in between 8 and 8:30.
Dress up
Both offices had dress codes, but whenever de Souza traveled to New York, she said her boss would advise her to ditch the usual color for black or gray dresses and slick her hair back in a ponytail.
“Formally dressed every day: trench coat, nice shoes, you always had to dress up,” de Souza said.
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de Souza said she remembered wearing an off-white suit one October, only to have someone say there was an unofficial rule not to wear the color after Labor Day — to this day, she’s not sure whether they meant a fashion rule or an office rule, but stopped opting for all white.
New York-style clothing seeped into de Souza’s life before the move, though. She said she bought a Burberry trench coat while she was still an associate in Brazil with her own money, and loved wearing it on trips to the bank’s headquarters.
Lunch isn’t social
In Brazil, everyone took an hourlong break for lunch, de Souza said, but New York employees ate at their desks. They’d get a salad or a sandwich and bring it back to their monitors, eating as they worked.
“I remember my first week in New York, it was around noon, and I was like, ‘Who is going to invite me to lunch?” she said. “After a year or so, I was soaked in and I kind of embraced it, but at first I felt so lonely and thought nobody was going to eat.”
Food itself became another point of contrast — de Souza said people would sometimes be surprised when she brought rice and beans into the office, not knowing the dish is typical of Brazil. When she did buy lunch from the office cafeteria in New York, she said she opted for pre-set salads during her first months in the city because she worried about taking too long to place her order.
de Souza said she started drinking coffee after the move, and lattes in particular, partly because of all the coffee chats.
Time is money
New York felt like “the eye of the storm,” and de Souza said people worked nonstop, had higher standards, and expected more preparation.
“I felt like the intern always spoke five languages and went to an Ivy League school,” de Souza said. “It was like ‘Oh my God, if I breathe too slow I’m losing time.”
Have an executive presence
Beyond dressing and eating differently, de Souza said she also learned to alter her corporate presence, partly because there was a culture of total excellence in New York. With so many talented people in the room, she said she had to figure out how to be even better at her job. She also enrolled in — and appreciated — training courses about everything from her accent to doing business in English throughout her career.
“You learn a lot from being in that environment,” de Souza said of her time in New York. “My boss was like, ‘You need to speak slower, look at people, eye contact, no hand gestures.'”
