This is smart. I left GS right around the time they were starting such an (similar?) initiative. It also makes employees more fungible, on average, which is nice.
I don't know of any such mandate in GS, was it for a specific division or group of teams? The company culture supports moving internally, but I never heard of anything like a mandate in my very recent stint there.
Circa 2014 they started a program where Analysts temporarily work on teams that did not hire them, following their three-month orientation. Based on the parent comment, it sounds as if it was taken even further. I was in the Tech Division before it was rebranded as Engineering and merged with SecDiv / Core Strats by Eli Wiesel et al.
