7 Things I Hate About Citi
A pretty open person to my friends about how much I hate Citi and saw a lot of posts here hating on them lately so thought I'd share the reasons I hate them as well, feel free to chime in below on why you hate Citi.
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Citi would come to my campus a twice a year for info sessions and OCR. My first info session the MD stood up to the front of the podium and spent 15 minutes on why Citi is top-tier bank because they hold analysts accountable for mistakes which helps you learn. He also told a "funny story" about how he once yelled at an analyst for making a mistake. Yes, this Citi MD was bragging about how bad his culture was.
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At this same info session, above, we eventually broke out into networking which consists of 10 starry eyed sophomores surrounding an analyst and asking terrible questions while trying to sound smart. This analyst we were surrounding would ignore every question and spent 10 minutes talking about how much he wanted to go to Centerview and how much better it is there. I hope he didn't make it.
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I went to a lot of bank info sessions during recruitment and there was one info session for an Asian bank (MUFG/HSBC) type bank. An analyst gave their background at the front and mentioned he lateral'd from Citi as did the MD and VP at the info session (all 3 lateral'd from Citi at different points of their career). I raised my hand and mentioned that they all left Citi and asked what stood out about their new Asian bank that inspired them to move? All 3 proceeded to shit on Citi's culture, basically ignoring my question because of their hate for Citi. Doesn't surprise me.
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For this same Asian bank above, I interviewed and one of my interviewers was a different associate (from the 3 above). Guess where he started his career? You guessed it, Citibank. I asked him what led him to join his new bank and he straight up said that he hated Citi and that he would recommend that no one ever work there.
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I reached out to network with 2 Citi analysts I had met at the info session mentioned in reasons 1-2 and both of them scheduled times to talk with me on the phone. Both of them, 5 minutes before the call was supposed to happen, proceeded to cancel on me. I reached out to follow up on our scheduled calls and neither of them responded and ghosted me. I skipped class to accommodate their schedule where they both somehow only had 30 minutes of availability right smack in the middle of the day (both of these calls were independent of each other and purely coincidental). I decided, due to reasons 1-5, not to apply to Citi.
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Senior year I took a physics class and we had an international TA who didn't have the easiest time speaking to the class in English. We had a TA teaching session where he went over a few homework problems and a girl there proceeded to openly trash talk him about how he wasn't clear and how he wasn't a good teacher. She then would interrupt him mid-sentence to ask him to repeat everything he said for the last 30 seconds because he wasn't being clear. She also yelled at him during this teaching session for some stupid reason that I forgot (I think the room was too hot?). Guess where she was an incoming analyst at? Yep, you guessed it, Citibank.
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I was meeting a friend of mine at a bar when we were interns (rip BBar). I got to the bar and saw him standing next to some guy and talking. I went up to them and introduced myself to the stranger and he proceeded to ask what I did and where I went to school (a lower tier ivy). I told him where I worked and went to school and asked him the same. He then proceeded to shit on my school for 2 minutes and went on and on about how much he hated my school and how we're bottom tier and not a good place to get an education. He then proceeded to tell me he was an investment banker at Citi and went to Harvard. The twist in all this? He went to Maryland (or some other state school) for undergrad and did some weird 1 year masters program at Harvard. Not only did this guy not really go to Harvard, he also has to work at Citi so he really took an L. The worst part? My friend had just met him but I thought they were friends, otherwise I would have decked his scrawny 5 foot 6, 130 lb ass.
Feel free to share reasons why also you hate the worst bank in all of finance.
Lol the last reason is the best #fuckciti
Lol remember when Citi accidentally wired almost a billion dollars to the wrong account and then got upset when they wouldn't return it?
remember when a London trader at Citi caused Swedish flash crash ?
At some point in my career, I was considering lateralling to Citi HC team from HC consulting. Proceeded to have so-called "Networking" calls with 6 different people. It started with me reaching out to 1 person because someone else referred me. This one person then said "you should chat with X" etc. After 6 networking calls at random points in the day over the span of 1 month, I was told that I should apply through the normal channel for entry level roles and that my CV was be flagged as a referral. I had 3 years of consulting experience at this point. Granted, no IB experience but I did a fair amount of CDD work and was financially literate. After being told this, I proceeded to explain how I could learn the financial modelling within 3-6 months but already had the leadership skills (was managing teams of 2-4 people) to start as an AN2 or AN3. Was told no. I then asked why it is different for MBA hires with 0 IB experience (and sometimes also 0 HC or 0 Consulting) to come in as Associates and was just told "That's different". Fuck Citi.
Im shocked this is getting upvotes unless it’s from the people who loathe Citi.
most coverage teams have analysts with IB experience at lower tier firms reset when they lateral. Im not aware of many teams that would bring a consultant in at analyst 3 with only consulting exp
Was once in process to lateral to Citi from a similar bank (wanted to change coverage group). I had applied through referral and they reached out to me for a first round interview. They later sent me an invite for a date / time that was never discussed or agreed and that I couldn't make as I was travelling for a live deal I was on. I declined the invitation and flagged I couldn't make it but would be happy to reschedule for any other day / time of the week. They never replied and sent me a rejection email the day after.
To date they are still trying to fill the position while I ended up at MS. Fuck Citi.
How is the culture at the bank? Sounds like a bunch of people are salty they didn’t get the offer/ interview.
Congrats on ur offer bro
Got rejected from Citi. Accepted offer from Liontree's adult media & entertainment group. FUCK Citi.
Got an offer from Citi. Accepted a better one from a McDonalds. Fuck Citi.
Got rejected from Citi. Now have an OnlyFans following making 1mm a year. Fuck Citi.
Once I was in a networking call with a Citi banker and the topic of SPACs came up. I remarked I didn’t know his coverage group also did SPAC deals (I was a sophomore with not much knowledge of banking). Dude proceeds to smirk and proceeds to say in the most condescending tone Citi is #1 for SPAC deals, how could you not know that? Guy is a fatass anyway with glasses. I hope he doesn’t get any bitches ever. Fuck Citi
In my superday they asked me:
"what is the WACC formula"
"tell me a time you worked with a team"
Lmao the most basic and boring questions ever
Overall had a terrible experience with their process and no surprise they took mediocre people from my school
Not me but a good friend.
He was working at a smaller shop at the time and was top bucket. Sharp guy, hard working and overall a great candidate (went on to work at a better BB). However, it so happened that he went to a no-name school.
He had an interview for an An2 role and, after accommodating for the only time that worked for the interviewer, he gets an email 5 minutes before stating that the call would be cancelled. My friend obviously checks in on the interviewer, who has the audacity to tell him that he went to Sloan for his MBA and he only hires smart people like himself. He then spent the following 10’ going on a rant about how kids like him def have a role in society but IB is off the table. Worst part is that when my friend called HR to discuss this they ignored him completely and just stated that it was a shame he had decided not to progress with the application (when he explicitly stated the opposite).
Citi rejected me #ThankYouCiti
This girl who is currently working at Citi SF Tech, reached out to me twice when I was just making some small progress in my IB efforts.
She started our networking conversation with "hey do you know any people I could talk to, you know, people who actually matter (meaning people who are more senior, unlike me? real subtle)" and "hey can you push my resume for me?"
She then did a 5th year so she can qualify some diversity recruiting bs.
Granted, I work at a worse bank from a prestige perspective, but, Fuck Citi.
Citi London is pretty chill though, good people and not a bunch of virgin hardos
Had a SD with a regional Citi office where an upperclassman in my school is also an incoming analyst (only one year above me). I hopped on the phone with them to ask for any tips/advice and what kind of questions to expect. They said "I don't think its appropriate for you to ask these questions, especially to an incoming analyst" (in a very condescending tone). Bruh, you're only one year above me get your head out of your ass. Turns out they recently quit even before bonus hit. Fuck Citi fr.
Damn dude are you me? Literally had the same experience with an incoming analyst (who’s also an upperclassman at my school) at a Citi regional office. Had the offer, was trying to decide between Citi and 2 other BBs. Dude had the audacity to start the call with “Tell me about yourself. Why did you choose to do banking?” I thought he was being funny so I said, “Damn, you sent me back to my interview mode” and tried to tell him sth funny/interesting about me instead. Instead of just holding a normal convo, this guy was grilling me on my story (which his senior bankers already grilled me on). I asked him honest questions around his experience, and this guy literally said the same shit your upperclassman told you. I was getting mad and was telling myself that WSO monkeys were right about Citi people when he told me, “Just take the other BB offer. I won’t take it personally.” Like wtf? I did take the other BB offer that was way better than Citi. Fuck Citi.
Did you just have a stroke?
Think of Citi as the fly by night carnival set up in the empty lot on the edge of town.
The reasons for hating Citi are many and sundry. They range from dysfunctional methods of collaboration and organization, poisonous, vicious and incompetent HR, bottom of the street pay (with Kafka-esque communication - imagine a group head one day saying "we made record money this year", and the next day saying "if only we had the money to pay higher bonuses.."), as others have mentioned incessant woke indoctrination and hiring policies, a KYC process that is a harrowing descent into madness (it doesn't matter how early you begin KYC on a deal at Citi, it will never complete until the last possible second after weeks of begging) and despite an exodus of talent as a result of the above, frozen headcount combined with managers demanding more meetings and more revenue, creating a vicious downward spiral of over-stretched juniors and resignations. Not to mention the consistently poor quality of the work product - clients receive a pile of schizophrenic, ugly and barely coherent slop, the result of Citi's 10 MDs per account circle jerk method.
One example to sum it up - how valuation is performed at Citi. A sector team creates a shoddy 20 row operating model, another random team links it to the LBO model, the Lev Fin team looks at the output and makes up a leverage number, and the sponsors team takes the output and puts it on a football field. Needless to say the end result is a random outcome. Like a game of telephone but with numbers. As comical as it sounds, this is not a joke.
London office
Was interning in a tier 1 EB and was trying to secure a FT offer from a competitor to guarantee I would have a plan B in case I did not receive an offer from the EB, so I recruited FT for Citi for one of the best M&A teams
Had 12 interviews with Citi. Smashed all of them. After the 5th, in the end of every interview, they would always tell me that the next interview would be the last one. Had 12. 12 fucking interviews. It seemed that they were trying to get more time to see if I did not receive the FT offer from the EB that I was interning at to offer me an internship.
3 months after the first interview, they finally called me to give me an offer. Unsurprisingly, they said "well, we do not have enough budget to hire an analyst, but if you want, we can offer you a summer internship". I told them that I already had received a FT offer and would have no interest in joining their team. Fuck Citi
Bonus: Met 5 guys in the process that ended up leaving to other banks / PE. Once, I met randomly one of them in a pub and he told me that the culture of the team was absolutely horrible and he would HIGHLY recommend me to avoid joining Citi to the extent possible. Fuck Citi
I got ghosted by a close family friend (we weren’t close but our families were extremely close) who worked at Citi. Asked him to connect me with some people after we met in person and he never even bothered replying.
Also I don’t think a single alumni I reached out to at Citi replied.
fuckciti
Citi Houston juniors are officially banned from working past midnight. Management actively trying to improve culture due to substantial junior attrition.
Where is Citi is Paradise?
Also had a horrible time with a citi analyst. Was apart of a program where I had an assigned citi mentor for a month. Dude was a complete jackass. Spent the entire time flexing about what he had to do to get the job, and how he knew everything about investment banking before he even started. Randomly started giving me technical questions in a call that was supposed to be our introductory call to get to know each other. Berated me that I didn't know anything. Which was completely false because I'd been prepping my technicals for like a year and half now and he was just being nit-picky and anal. Every single call we had schedule he'd miss, cancel or not even show up. Was supposed to meet one time, and he was like yeah I know your school attendance isn't that important so he recommended me to skip so we could talk. Skipped the class, and he didn't even show up for the call after convincing me my class wasn't as important as my conversation with him. Every call was literally just him flexing about the amount of hard work he had to put in to get IB offer, and how I wasn't ready and should look at other alternatives.
Anyways he finally gave me the referral to interview after like a month. I said thanks, and he left my message on read and never responded to any of my attempts to reach out during the interview process. Made it to the superday didn't get an offer, and I was just so happy. A week later signed with an EB instead. I truly can say having my calls with him were some of the most excruciating moments of my life.
Reminder this was an analyst with only like 8 months in. I feel you'd expect this sort of behavior from someone at least with more experience.
Also fun fact. Found their instagram and it has their height + full job title position lol.