- Layers - more cuts on level 7,8 where SME layer resides. Level 5,6 played musical chairs, cause someone knew someone.
- Heavy Governance, less Hands On - still too many teams playing coordinator roles and lack core tech competence.
- Management- focuses on managing above, smooth talkers using presentation prepared by level 7,8.
- Labs - weak. Dump all new tech on application teams without doing proper POCs.
6 replies (most recent on top)
I am in tech at Citi. I so want to comment on what I’ve seen but can’t do so as it’d narrow down quite quickly as to who I am and I need my job. All I can say is that there are 100% very valid points being made on this post. I’m sorry but I can’t say any more than that and I know how being vague sounds but again, I need my job.
Citi tech su-ks because like the Wizard of Oz, behind the flashy curtain there’s a broken down, antiquated system that they’ve been patching for years with baling wire, duct tape and chewing gum. If it were to be replaced, expenses would explode, profits would sink, and the fat cats would have a harder time justifying their bloated compensation.
Tech needs a complete overhaul. They cost the most money to run and are always over budget on projects and behind schedule. They are inefficient and need to be overhauled. Not only is Citi paying huge amounts of money on antiquated systems and over paying on projects and hours, the technology used is also very poor quality. It’s a bad system.
The person that keeps repeating hardware/software, dude that part is like 1/50th part of what the citi tech organization is. I work in that part and we are heavily understaffed but there are many different branches and each branches out even more. I have absolutely no idea what every branch does, but yes, end user experience su-ks but just let me tell you we are overworked and understaffed. Few people support thousands. Our local office has 3-4 on the floor end user support supporting about 10,000 people and the initial helpdesk is outsourced and a lot of issues still go through.
I've been at places where we have 3-4 people supporting like 200 people, with outsourced helpdesk as well. Just to compare.
This is hard for me to type as if I say too much or am too specific, it’d be easy to figure out who I am and like most of us, I need the pay. So I’ll have to be vague.
I’ve been on several different calls recently and the handling and viewpoint of tech is as if its managed by someone 2-3 levels up who’s read a pamphlet on tech and now has to make tough decisions.
Deciding to dismantle parts of tech at site A and replace it with another type of tech at site B. The experienced people who setup and know the tech at site A and how to migrate it safely to the tech at site B, we’ll lay them off and just work with what you have which is less tenured less experienced new people.
For those less experienced people, to encourage them to ramp up from zero to 10 years of experience, just shorten the deadlines and tell them they are 100% responsible for outages should one happen. This will motivate them to do better.
Witnessing this once is bad enough, but in the span of 1 month, I’ve been on several calls of different levels, over different areas and they are all using this recipe.
If this is a ploy to drive even more people off out of frustration, then its done so at the risk of outages?!?!!?
If its a sincere attempt to provide technical direction of stability and growth, then I’m back to my statement of its as if someone up high read a tech pamphlet here and there (tech for dummies book) and is trying to call the shots based off of it.
Tech at Citi is sh-t. I have never experienced so many hardware / software issues in my professional life. Even universities I attended had better IT services.