Dear Team,
Since tomorrow is Juneteenth, we’re dropping our Thursday note early, celebrating freedom and the courage to face the unknown. That includes the 2,000 contractors who are about to explore new horizons.
I was rebooting the lake house router for the fourth time when my daughter Madison, a consultant, looked up from her laptop and dropped a truth bo-b. After attending a workshop called “How to Say Less with More Slides,” she launched a side hustle: hand-poured soy candles, branded Wick’d Ambition. Her top seller? Burnout.
I asked, “Why take this on?”
She smirked and said, “Because projecting calm while everything’s on fire is our family crest.” Nailed it.
Madison didn’t wait for a steering committee or spin up a Jira board. She got scrappy, lit a flame, and started pouring.
And honestly, that’s what we’re doing at Citi.
We’re not waiting for perfect conditions. We’re simplifying. Transforming. Reducing thousands of contractor roles. Eliminating teams. Watching senior leaders chase “new opportunities.”
It’s been a wild season. We’re not just cutting. We’re mastering the art of spontaneous disappearance. Reorgs have been chaotic. Some of you have cycled through five managers in two months, like a corporate version of speed dating. Others have no manager at all but are still getting performance reviews in Workday, rated by what we can only assume is a rogue AI. Your performance is entirely up to you, except for the part where our bell curve mandates 7 percent of you be labeled “needs improvement,” regardless of actual work, and the rest of you as 3-3.
Yet, you’re holding up entire teams solo. Replying to emails with “that data’s from Q1.” Chasing approvals from inboxes that vanished in the last reorg. Somehow, you’re still logging in.
Let’s also take a moment to recognize real innovation. Congratulations to our colleagues in Pune and Rutherford, who jointly earned a U.S. patent for a new approach to enterprise link security. Unlike the rest of the industry, where clicking a Confluence link just works, our system sends you to the wrong page the first time and then the correct one the second click.
Citi’s future isn’t being crafted in town halls or churned out in pre-approved PowerPoint decks. It’s being hand-poured, one wobbly, slightly singed candle at a time. The wick keeps leaning toward the compliance risk column. But it’s burning.
Thank you for driving the narrative, if not the results.
Trim