Selective layoffs? Maybe.

Conversation witnessed and no, I’m not going to give the who or where. Think what you want, don’t really care.

Management realized that the Bora Bora was not handled well. Too many of the wrong people were let go. Experienced tenured staff, staff with intimate tech and otherwise, knowledge of proprietary systems, processes, procedures, experienced key players in many areas were let go. The “life raft” exercise failed miserably.

What they also didn’t know or realize or think would not matter, is that those who were left behind were also leaving. Citi banked (pun) on the desperation of those left behind would encourage them to put in long hours to pick up the slack, that they’d be so grateful that they were not let go and so desperate to keep their job, they’d be locked into the job, chained to their desk. The new replacement staff hired walked around for several months lost and clueless and produced nothing. The knowledge lost didn’t magically be absorbed through osmosis by sitting at the desk.

The reality was that the staff left behind and not let go, started looking for jobs upon the release of the news of Bora Bora, the Jane speech of “get off the train” motivated them. Yes, the job market su-ked and yes, it took 6+ months or more to find a job but eventually people found one and left. I’m not talking just about Wells Fargo but also elsewhere as well and are still leaving even now and they are taking their friends with them.

My opinion , Citi is now struggling to keep what they do have. Now with reviews on the horizon and the much expected lack luster rewards because “well, your a 1 or 2 but times are hard so I can’t give you anything” speech that many will hear, will make things even more worse. Its odd to me that Citi will let go tenured staff and or do very little to retain them but will think nothing of replacing them with someone inexperienced at a higher salary only to get little or much less then the person they ran off. What can Citi do to make things better? Let’s see what they come up with. I guess the real question on the table now is, is it too late?

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“Citi banked (pun) on the desperation of those left behind would encourage them to put in long hours to pick up the slack, that they’d be so grateful that they were not let go and so desperate to keep their job, they’d be locked into the job, chained to their desk. “

This is true and happening in technology groups because they are filled with
Indian nationals employed through company-sponsored visas so they cannot afford to lose their jobs. Those workers cannot get another job in the U.S. if they lose Citi-sponsored work visas, so they slave to do multiple peoples work and unquestioningly follow every inane and conflicting demand from incompetent managers above them (who themselves are too well-paid for that level of incompetence to “get off the train”). Managers who are work visas-sponsored then in turn push all the people under them to do same, over work and put up with chaos and hide all the complaints from bubbling up because that would make them look bad and threaten their own jobs. So, this strategy of squeezing more work from less people does work to some extent, but the result is still going to sink the ship.

One of the best statements I’ve read on this board is: “Citi has taken extraordinary measures to ensure that I’m numb to layoffs. You’re not laid off- - sure whatever. You are laid off- - sure whatever”.

Post ID: @cszw+1uQQnrij
Employees know the Layoffs were politically motivated based on who was/is a favored son/daughter and who was Not. The Layoffs are Not based on job performance, are least most of the time. Citi did Not hire 310 new MDs as you posted. After the 300 MDs were informed of their Layoffs in Nov.2023, Citi turned around and announced in Dec.2023, 310 incompetent MotherFvckers, Directors were getting promoted to MD. Yes that's Citi "math".

In addition to Citi stupidly running off people, Citi’s mantra is that its better to hire more people even though they may eventually quit rather than to figure out as to why they may be leaving to begin with.

I say stupidly running off people as they ran off 300 MD for the headlines, then turned around to hire back 310 to replace them. In other words, “Citi math” in order to get the results you want to present. Not the results, but the results you want to present at that time no matter how fleeting it may be. Gee, I wonder how far this methodology permeates the company, you know like the VOE.

I’ve heard over and over many times now on several different levels….

“as of now, I’ve not heard of anything”
“just BANAMEX is on the radar”
“if you’re here at this meeting now, congratulations, you’re made it, you’re safe”

and every person reading this post right now knows that yet another round of layoffs are going to happen either the last of this year, in other words soon, or the first of next. All of the managers who have made such statements as above, will be looked at as liars and manipulators that can’t be trusted.

Ultimately, Citi has said it aims to shrink its staff by 20,000 by 2026, although Mason said the reorganization will be done this year. - Citi CFO

https://www.bankingdive.com/news/citi-expenses-risk-control-consent-orders-earnings/729897/

Looks like the layoff was the wrong move as they ran off top talent.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/a-key-to-citis-regulatory-woes-staff-need-skills-enhancement/ar-AA1siS6k?ocid=BingNewsVerp

“ the bank has been grappling with a shortage of skilled personnel, finding at times that it did not have the right training and assessment tools to fix its regulatory challenges. ……etc…In one place, for example, the analysis cites "insufficient compliance risk management skills” among staff directly dealing with such issues.”

I wish they’d selectively layoff HR and if they did, would anyone know it.

Could be.

I think the plan is to, diminish BANAMEX and see where we are at that point.
I say “think” as no one really knows for sure, not even Jane. Play it be ear tactic.
If senator Warren is correct and Citi is too large to be managed, then cutting BANAMEX lose would help with that perception I guess.

I don’t know, god help us all with this leadership.

I thought it was classic to layoff managers with the reasoning that we were too many manager heavy only to turn back around and high more managers than we let go to begin with. Those that we hired, a rather healthy slice of them have also left.

Poor Jane is so out of her depth on running such a large company its not even funny.
It guess it was believed that just getting the job alone, would cause all the obstacles to disappear and all the problems would just melt away.

You’re the captain, you have to provide a heading, you have to have a vision of where we are going and you have to know how to get there. The canned pressed release responses are empty if you don’t have a plan. “We plan on providing world class service to our customer and to drive innovation blah…blah….blah”.
How? and like what? Give a roadmap, explain rather than generalize. Innovation you say, like what and how do we get there? These questions are where she folds with no discernible plan other than seeing what the other big banks do and try to play catch up after the fact.

Jumped ship from a fortune 100 company to Citi. Sorry I did and after 3 years I’m trying to go back now. Making all the calls, tapping all the shoulders. I’d be more than willing to go back at equal salary, no questions asked. This is a lost company with sporadic focus and no vision. I fear for the employees.

From another post.

All of the heavy hitters I know from tech, to project managers and managers have all said the same thing. They’ve had far more than enough, they are…..DONE! True, they need a paycheck but not necessarily a paycheck here. They are not waiting for the job market to improve, they are making moves now. I can’t even imagine the influx out of Citi once the market gets better.

Some were made counter offers (increase in pay) to stay for which was turned down. One of them….and I kid you not, was made a counter offer that was 20K less than where they were leaving to. Who in their right mind would say “Sure, I’ll turn down that extra 20K per year in order to stay here”. If Citi has an ace up their sleeve in order to retain top talent, they better use it now.

Citi fired too many workers and added more managers. They should have reduced managers and added workers.

The sad part about this post is that its so true. Talk about hitting the nail on the head.

I've seen a lot of managers who still seem surprised when people are leaving or moving to other departments. They shouldn't be shocked when they mismanage people and set them up to fail.

The question of: “ What can Citi do to make things better? “

One thing they could do is to make work from home a more permanent option.
The infrastructure is in place and works. Its not like they have to build it out. Most people do not have customer facing roles, I know I don’t. Also, for most teams 50% or more are dispersed across the globe. For me, there’s 3 of us at my site the rest are spread out on different continents. For us 3, we have different shifts, so what’s the point. Its the epitome of stupidity.

To the poster…well said.

Senator Warren wants to limit Citi growth which is funny to me.
Jane is doing just fine on her own at shrinking Citi.
The product, the talent, the ownership, the quality, the respect, the pride, Jane is doing all she can to let it all bleed away. In that, she’s ahead of the game.

Citi needs to clean up the Indian contractors. They are essentially scammers!

Let’s be honest. All this is really the fault of HR. If they actually did things and did things right there would not be this mess.

I got off the train! A no-brainer with Gomez Adams as the engineer!

Well I know this, where I’m at, there’s some heavy networking going on outside of Citi and I’m not talking about LinkedIn either. Now is a slow down as usual during the fall and winter. First quarter of next year when hiring picks up, there will be a migration of employees leaving Citi. Many are willing to take a slight cut in pay for somewhere more stable, managers as well.

At @1wbn+1uQQnrij
Yes, one could say that I guess.

One could also say that Jane is out of her depth. So lost that she couldn’t think of anything else to do to fix things other than spend millions on a consultant group to tell her what to do. We couldn’t use the McKinsey group because under her advisement, we already paid them millions once to tell us what to do and they gave us the lean model which was a disaster. So we went with another advisement group.

Side note, Jane is also an alumni of McKinsey:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4Cy0vYKI6_Y

One could also so say that she’s been far too fixated on catering to the supposed woke crowd thinking it’d cause them to flock to Citi with their business. I see no other attempted strategy from the recent past other than that. A friend of mine had a business and the customer base was minimal. He then hung a sign out that said “I’m woke friendly” and the customer’s just came flooding in because that’s how that works, right?

One could also say that you have something other than a gimmick to beat the competition. No one cares if you’re the first female CEO….or woke centric or whatever. You have to have either:
a.) provide something your competition doesn’t
and\or
b.) provide a better service than your competition

One could also say that one measurable metric of CEO leadership is taking care of their people…oh wait, never mind, I forgot about the Bora Bora joke.

So what Jane can learn from this layoff process? its clear that she can not trust manages who are selecting people to layoff, it some thing like giving key to a theif and asking him to protect assest, Layoffs happened based managers personal opinios about others not based inidividual strength and skills and commitment towards organization. If some challenges manager he will be eliminated rather discussing and exploring why some one raisng challenges. you can not see a team meating where people challening and debate about a topic just listen to manages who dictates what to do whcih he dont know at all. Just ask your self leads why apple is not failed till now? why i am not able to give quality of work like apple?

Citi has been doomed for decades not years. It takes decades of decay, decrepit "management" as well as
unrealistic and absurd policies to lead to Rome's demise. Every pull on the threads of Citi's fabric of existence contributes to its foreeable De@th. The Grim Reaper is calling Citi's name. ROTFLMFAO!

It’s not that Citi has no idea about burnout- Citi knows very well - they just don’t care about the damage it causes to individual employees.
Mgrs required to provide performance ratings for individual employees as early as October for years…the individual employee’s ’self-assessment’ has nothing to do with it. Nothing new in this- happened long before Transformation- at least in one global function.

This perfectly sums up the situation within O&T or whatever we are called now. Everyday more experienced and valuable staff are getting off Jane’s Ghost Train. The like it or leave strategy has backfired. Now we are into the year end review process which is rigged to not reward people who perform. I’ve already been asked to input my teams grades before they have even written their year end assessments. As I apply for other roles in proper companies I am getting the hundreds of unpaid overtime hours back by doing as little as possible. I am hoping everyone else is doing the same. Disillusioned does not cover how most people feel.

Too many incompetent Managing Directors and Directors still exist. Unless Citi takes urgent action to remove them and replace them with new generation of competent leaders Citi is doomed.

OP sums it up. Executive Leadership turned the “restructuring “ into a Game of Thrones. Not sure what they thought would happen? This is what happens when management lets elite consulting firms tell them what to do.

You’re supposed to be so grateful that they found you worthy to be allowed to exist as an employee that your undying loyalty compels you to put in massively large amounts of hours per week and not expect any compensation increase or bonus at the end of the year.

Instead what they got is people, even now, trolling job boards daily.

The glamorization of overly long hours by management seems to not have worked out so well.

Are the leaders paying the price for bringing this to this state? They are happily collecting their paychecks and their millions.

Citi has no idea at all on how to mitigate burn out. Oh sure, they talk a good game but when it comes down to it, not a clue.

truth

Thread regarding Citigroup Inc. / Citibank / Citi layoffs

Selective layoffs? Maybe.

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