Just another employee number lost in a sea of the brainwashed - Infrastructure Analyst Citi Employee Review

No matter what your position in the firm, you are just another employee, one of thousands across several regions. There is so much red tape and bureaucracy - more than any firm I've ever worked in previously. You need to raise requests to do absolutely everything / anything. Most of the Americans staff are always online and I get the impression that a lot of them have no life outside of work. Some of the management that I came across really are on a different level and have zero in common with their staff. They seem to be almost brain washed, constantly speaking in corporate language, and clinical to the last with the most tedious task or request. These managers also do very little to improve that situation with employees and some do not possess any interpersonal skills whatsoever. There was also zero training. We were given a booklet when I worked there to select training courses from and then informed 1 week later that there was nothing left in the budget! Then there’s e-mails. You will get 100’s if not 1000‘s per day. The Americans and especially the Indian employees love to e-mail constantly and keep you informed of things which don’t concern you, your team, or your region. This means every morning you spend 30+ minutes sorting (deleting) all of the rubbish e-mails. I think these e-mail offenders want to be seen to be doing something so constantly e-mailing is one way of doing that. Some of them even e-mail to tell you their daily schedule or to tell you that they will be back in 10 minutes as they have to go pick up the kids! – thanks for letting the 500+ people on all of those distribution lists know! You are also forced to go to regular town hall meetings where some big whig will fly in to give updates. I found this very frustrating as I was always busy and when I went to these town halls I was coming back to even more work as my entire team had to attend. The updates were normally extremely boring and most people spent the hour or hour and a half texting / surfing on their phones (if you were lucky to be sitting at the back) or staring into space. And guess who were the only ones to ask Qs?.... yup, other managers / senior managers. My job description didn’t match the day to day aspects of the role itself and it was nowhere near as hands on as I was lead to believe at interview. The job was extremely silo’d and you find yourself doing the same thing day in, day out. Some people don’t mind this but it wasn’t for me. In some cases you are expected to be at your manager’s beck and call 24/7. In IT, On Call is often a requirement though this was not stressed to me at interview. On call payment was also not as much as promised. My ex-boss was a real piece of work and no one in the team liked her at all, in fact 6 of us have left since January this year and most of the rest are looking for jobs at present. I don't think she ever smiled, she had a permanent scoul on her face, and if she passed you in the corridor she would never acknowledge you unless you were another senior manager or higher. She very rarely let us work from home - even though it was sold to us at interview how flexible Citi were and that working for a virtual team enabled us to WFH was available whenever we wanted. Not a chance. You were always quizzed why you wanted to excuse yourself for an hour to go to the doctors / dentist / personal issue and asked could you not reschedule outside working hours or at the weekend. It got to the stage where we just didn't tell her that we needed to leave for appointments, and we covered for each other if she came looking. She also wanted 1 on 1's every week. Mine was on the same day as our team meeting and a day after our wider team meeting, so I was regurgitating the same updates 3 times in just over 24 hours!. When I rescheduled my 1 on 1's to bi-weekly she marked me down in my appraisal for this even though it was 30 minutes wasted where I would be better working. She was rarely reachable as she would go to the opening of an envelope if it involved any possibility of networking in Citi. On MIM (Major Incident) calls she would dial in to announce her arrival, and then drop off and leave us to sort out the issue, taking all the glory afterwards and not handing out praise awards which every other manager seemed to do for any piece of work you completed. After my child was born she would not let me change my shift from 9-5 to 8-4 for a few weeks to help out at home with the new arrival despite the fact that there were other guys in the team who could adequately cover for each other. I think the quote was ‘I’ve no business need for anyone in the team to be in here at 8am’. She advised an ex colleague not to apply for an internal job at a higher salary grade as he wouldn’t get it – he applied and got it. She was the worst 'manager' I have ever had the misfortune of working for and anyone you ask about her, cannot stand her. A lot of jobs there in IT are now being out sourced to India but they are constantly hiring. You have to ask why there is such a high staff turnover. Citi to me was like being back at school and I could not wait to leave. I’ve also never met as many people who absolutely hate their jobs / managers, but still stay there. This is possibly due to the higher salaries that they pay. This firm is a walking talking cliché of 'the office' and corporate culture that you will either love and thrive on, or detest and squirm in. Avoid.