10 ms·
Citigroup Plans to Cut 20k Jobs
- saos 3y agoinsanity
- steveBK123 3y agoDisaster long in the making. The worst performing big bank of the last decade. Stock still ~90% below its 2007 peak, and been flat for last 10 years.
- nxm 3y agoCredit Suisse begs to differ
- steveBK123 3y agoshould have specified "Worst US bank"
- John23832 3y agoIn America. The gap between JPM and Citi is incredible. Part of JPM's success is that it has basically been deemed "America's Bank" by the government, but the mismanagement at Citi is tangible too.
- steveBK123 3y agoJPM got to be deemed "America's Bank" by being ruthlessly efficient and very conservative re: risk. C & BAC are complete basket cases by comparison. Great brand, but I'd never work there...
- dtnewman 3y agoI worked at JPM in investment banking. At least on the IBank side, it was an incredibly well run company. I’m not gonna say there’s no bureaucracy there, but for a company with 200k+ employees it ran very efficiently. And they have always been relatively conservative, not taking on the riskiest bets that some of their peers did, which puts them into a very strong position to take advantage of downturns.
- steveBK123 3y agoYes they are incredibly conservative. They generally don't pay terribly well for non-revenue generating roles, for a broad definition of "non-revenue generating". I have had rounds of interviews with them over the years where they put me through a bunch of rounds, feel me out, and realize that actually.. they can't really afford me. I know people who take a job there and JPM nickel & dimes you on the way in, lies about target bonus not being prorated first year, and then also gives 0 raise first year. Cute stuff like "forgetting" to pay starting bonuses for months, etc. I've heard YoY raises that are some of the worst in the industry. To the point that leaving for a competitor is an easy 50%-100% increase in TC because of 5-10 years of surpassed raises. Another example, in 2020 when COVID hit they did some wide ranging bonus cuts to offset increases in loan reserves for expected credit losses during the pandemic. As all the stimulus kicked in and the economy started to rip, the credit losses didn't come to pass, so they subsequently paid out a fraction of the money they withheld earlier. Those pennies add up for JPM.
- tomrod 3y agoHalve/quarter your downsides, double your upsides, and you get a more accurate reflection for the Consumer/Small Business side of the house. IB/Commercial have a higher starting point but I am not familiar with the dynamics there. IT/Corporate is on par with Consumer/Small Business. That said, perceived poor performers really don't get paid well or get bonuses, and that's usually the only clear signal you get.
- decafninja 3y agoI haven't worked at JPM, but I have at a few of its competitors. As a technology professional, I think what you describe is par for course at all the banks, and more broadly speaking, pretty much all "non tech" companies in general where tech is considered an unrespected cost center. Tech compensation is bimodal. You have the top FAANG tier and maybe some companies one tier down where software engineers can make as much or more than medical doctors. Then you have a sharp drop off a cliff consisting of everyone else - where a senior or staff SWE equivalent with decades of experience can expect to retire in their 60s making about as much as a upper junior FAANG engineer. I was shocked last year when I heard my intern with zero years of experience got his offer...for about double my compensation at my last bank SWE job.
- bsdpufferfish 3y agoIn 2008 banks made behind closed doors deals with the government and some won and some were not invited (Lehman brothers, etc). We are still seeing the effects of that.
- nickjj 3y agoI never had an account anywhere else but Chase (run through JPM) is pretty good, independent of branding. I have no affiliation with them but at the branch I goto there's always a free ATM inside for quick things, they make it easy to schedule meetings for more complex tasks and the bankers who have their own cubicle tend to be knowledgeable (I've encountered a couple of them over the years). It's super easy to reach them too, and this is with a basic checking account only. Their checking account is free with no penalties as long as you direct deposit $500 / month OR keep $1,500 in there, for most folks on this site the first option means you only need to keep the bare minimum in there to pay your bills. I don't care about the lack of interest. Most trading platforms will give you 4%+ which IMO has a nice advantage in that you can stick idle cash in there (untraded) and collect risk free interest and you can quickly transfer it back to your bank account if you need it. It's a reasonable solution for an emergency fund, but it also doubles as a way to instantly put money into the market if an opportunity strikes.
- Kon-Peki 3y ago> Disaster long in the making 16 years ago I told them that making me whole wasn't enough - since they called me a liar in writing they needed to provide an apology in writing. And I wouldn't do business with them until that happened. Still waiting, and still not doing business with them.
- grepfru_it 3y agoDon’t know if you are actively avoiding Citi, but this tone rings a bell. I have been boycotting PNC bank since 2006. They stole over $700 from me. They gave me $300 back to settle. I refuse to do business with them. I went to a Pirates game, saw it was PNC Park and noped out of there. Their market cap has since doubled. Fucking over the little person is OK in our society.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JackFr 3y agoDown 90% since 2000.
- hipadev23 3y ago"by the end of 2026"
- tropical333 3y agoNot sure these few extra characters were too much to include in the original article's title. Misleading editing.
- pi-e-sigma 3y agotechnically January 2024 still qualifies as 'by the end of 2026'
- that_guy_iain 3y agoYea, it's probably going to take time to process them all.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bogomipz 3y agoAgreed that that that that qualifier or similar(over the next two years) would have made sense. However that's 200K began in earnest two month ago already: >The bank began layoffs in November. At the time, employees speculated Citi would ultimately cut 10% of its workforce. >They were spot on, executives confirmed Friday. I can't imagine the morale working in an environment where layoffs are slated to continue for the next two years. Citibank had already been a toilet of a bank for some time. I'm guessing a multi-year layoff plan will do little to alter that.
- gumballindie 3y ago[flagged]
- frankfrank13 3y agoomg im never first with this -- https://archive.is/KPGYi https://archive.is/KPGYi
- frankfrank13 3y agohere's jane fraser's memo -- https://archive.is/89gMt https://archive.is/89gMt
- bob1029 3y agoEven with 947 branches I don't understand how you wind up with 200k employees. Assume every single branch is staffed by no fewer than 20 people. That gets you to ~20k employees to run all brick & mortar retail ops. What the hell are the other 180k employees doing? That's still more than all of Google today.
- gpderetta 3y agoCustomer facing positions are only a tiny part of what a large bank does.
- idkyall 3y agoPlus customer facing employees aren't just the people in the branches, there's a massive volume of phone/email/etc support any large credit card issuer receives on a daily basis.
- kjs3 3y agoAnd a shrinking part. OTOH...we have a few tens of thousands of people just in the customer support call centers.
- kredd 3y agoLegal, compliance, customer service, investment banking, engineering, sales, marketing, IT, risk management. When it comes to large clients, you probably have multiple people just working on specific cases only. It balloons up when you multiply you by different locations and regulations.
- Irishsteve 3y agoCiti used (And maybe still are not sure) to be the biggest retail bank in the world. I'm not sure how exactly that was quantified but I'd assume its related too phsyical footprint. If thats the case I could see mid and back office functions ballooning
- TuringNYC 3y agoAs a retail and business customer of both Citi and Chase, there is no comparison. It would be illogical to use Citi given how great Chase's service is. While there are probably many factors, you cant be that comparatively bad for a competitive and fungible service -- and expect no business consequences.
- thiago_fm 3y agoThey do an outstanding job in mismanaging money. Surprised they are only cutting that much. They are on their way to become a new credit suisse, hopefully this helps to change that course. If you are interested in this subject, compare it to other big banks like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America etc. The difference is abysmal.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoCompare it how? Isn't Citi as different from Chase bank as Microsoft is from Google? Sure - they are both "financial" companies just like Microsoft and Google are both "tech" companies.
- NegativeLatency 3y agoMicrosoft and Google are pretty similar IMO, since both have: a browser, a search engine, an operating system, have or have tried to have a phone, both do some amount of hardware, and both also have cloud platform offerings.
- ses1984 3y agoOne makes money selling software and one makes money selling ads.
- cjbgkagh 3y agoI think that distinction will shrink over time as Microsoft sees ads as the future of their revenue growth.
- nilptr 3y agoMicrosoft sees ads as an add-on to existing revenue streams. It's core is software and software services. They couldn't be more different other than both being tech companies.
- ddano 3y agoInteresting that in beginning of January a lot of the job cuts are being announced, I'm sure decisions were made previous months. Is it because of the time to recover for potential backslash in the quartarely reports or any other reason?
- lefstathiou 3y agoHolidays cam play a role. Despite how much I say it shouldnt impact my decision making, it's tough to let someone go ahead of Thanksgiving and Christmas.
- ceejayoz 3y agoNo one likes being the Grinch in December.
- ddano 3y agoTrue that, I was totally having just the capitalist markets in mind when that thought went in my head. :D tnx for clarificaiton
- asdajksah2123 3y agoCompanies usually avoid laying off people before the holidays. My company did that once and despite not being a company that's ever really in the news, made the news for that reason.
- ddano 3y agoOh snap, that logic escaped me.
- wolverine876 3y agoMany companies do cut people before the end of they fiscal year, to avoid tax consequences and budgeting issues in the new year.
- notatoad 3y ago
- punkbit 3y agoHousing is extremely expensive. I wonder how people pay rent, mortgage, and other expenses with so many layoffs.
- antongribok 3y agoAren't we already seeing rent prices going down?
- punkbit 3y agoI hope that's the case where in the location where you are typing from. Unfortunately, it's not the case in places where I have family and friends. Some examples are in cities in Portugal, England, Spain, Germany, etc. In fact, in the past couple of days, I have found to have unrelated people I know about who are desperately looking for a place, separate cases but similar stories in London and Lisbon.
- davidw 3y agoIn the places that have built adequate housing, yes, a little bit. https://www.redfin.com/news/redfin-rental-report-december-2023/ https://www.redfin.com/news/redfin-rental-report-december-20...
- anthomtb 3y agoI have a rental which has been on the market since late September. The price has gone down by 20% (but was probably way too high to begin with). I will not drop the price further due to some weird laws in my American state. Ideally though, it would go down another 10%.
- ptero 3y agoI am not trying to sound flippant, but layoffs happen, and especially at companies that are not doing well (and Citigroup is not managing money well) they are normal. Then, those working at Citigroup are likely to get some form of severance. While I do not know the exact composition of the layoffs I suspect that many of those are well paid and have comfortable cushion. Furthermore, US economy is still chugging along and the unemployment is low by historical standards, so a significant portion of those laid off will likely find another job. They can also downsize and/or move to an area with lower cost of living. None of this is pleasant, but it is not the end of the world. My 2c.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoIs it possible to tag these layoff/job cut posts in some way so they can easily be aggregated?
- simonsarris 3y agowell there's https://layoffs.fyi/ https://layoffs.fyi/, but it won't capture Citigroup, its tech focused.
- mupuff1234 3y agoAnd as always I assume most of the senior leadership will go unscathed, and might even collect a bigger bonus due to "successfully reducing the cost structure".
- JackFr 3y agoWell you’re not correct there. The first round was in November and 300 managing directors, representing 10% of the employees at that level were let go. The cuts expected next week are for middle management at the next two levels down. Subsequent to that there is an expectation of one more round. Additionally Citi is shuttering the muni business. I think most people expect that after those changes attrition should get to the headcount target by 2026.
- rednerrus 3y agoThis generation of CEOs will go into the history books as the worst.
- c0pium 3y agoRobber barons who hired the Pinkerton detectives to kill their striking workers would like a word.
- emptysongglass 3y agoFor what it's worth, Hasbro did hire Pinkertons to show up at an innocent man's house last April.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y agoMy admittedly naive opinion is that the current generation of CEOs have decided to define a company's growth by headcount rather than revenue or profit. They don't put enough consideration into whether they need more people. They adopt the Project Manager mindset of thinking 9 women can produce a baby in 1 month if they work together. Just because 20 engineers produced a product that created a product that produces $100M ARR doesn't mean that 100 engineers will produce a product that produces $500M ARR.
- octacat 3y agoThe mindset is just follow the crowd to get average results, but to avoid risk of being blamed when stuff goes wrong.
- konschubert 3y agoBecause they overhired during the cheep money spree?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nobleach 3y ago
- mattbrewsbytes 3y ago[flagged]
- yyyfb 3y agoUnemployment still pretty low. https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une... The environment is much less forgiving of management mistakes, but someone's layoffs can also be a competitor's hiring opportunity.
- ok123456 3y agoThe laid-off email job corporate worker isn't going to take a job for $15/hr at the Flying J unclogging toilets. You can't use the total national average unemployment rate, which has issues of its own, to say the economy is healthy. In the same way, the stock market indices aren't helpful either beyond catastrophic values.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoRight, unemployment staying low through the layoffs show that the laid off have been able to find acceptable jobs.
- cowboyscott 3y agoNot to nitpick, but I wonder if we can better define "acceptable." For a good layoff outcome, I'd expect the employee to find a new gig within a few months, that's +/- X% of their previous comp. Open question: has anyone seen this data?
- yyyfb 3y agoI don't claim that it can be used to say the economy is healthy. I take issue with OP's claim that large layoffs necessarily imply recession. Unless you know that the laid off workers aren't rehired by a competitor, you don't know if the layoff isn't just an outcome of competition. The national unemployment rate is a proxy for it. At least at the first order, if a large number of people are being laid off (and this isn't the first layoff in the sector, Wells Fargo has cut over 40k jobs from their peak) then so far they are being rehired. And I agree with you, desk workers aren't going to take a $15/hr job at the Flying J, which is why I believe they were likely to be hired either by competition or at least in occupations consistent with their skill set and aspirations, else we'd see them show up in unemployment stats. Check sector stats too - very low for finance https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU04032216# https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU04032216#
- raziel2701 3y agoWhat's going on with all these job cuts all concentrated now? The market is expecting the Fed to start cutting interest rates[0] in March and that has been bullish for the latter half of last year in the stock market. So why are so many companies cutting people? Are the March rate cuts too little too late or do they see that some damage has already been done and they're front running that? Or is it that layoffs is the only way they see to maintain their growth expectations set by wall street and thus it's a financial engineering move? [0] https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch-tool.html https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch...
- rgbrenner 3y agoThis is everyone's last chance to trim their roles before the rate cuts. Once the rate cuts occur, the bull market will return, and companies doing layoffs (sending the message they are not experiencing growth) will be punished by the market.
- preommr 3y ago> bull market will return Return? It's been 'line only ever goes up' since November.
- rgbrenner 3y agoExpectation of a bull market. Right now companies arent being penalized for layoffs because there's some uneasiness about the impact of the feds actions. A lot of people expected a recession from pushing interest rates this high, but it hasn't happened. Once it's clear that there will be no recession from the fed's actions (ie: when rates drop), CEOs will be fully responsible for their company's poor performance in the eyes of the market.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- panphora 3y ago
- Whatarethese 3y agoI assume Citigroup is planning for the output of their workforce to decrease with all these layoff and not assume the other employees to pick up the slack. Right?
- Cruncharoo 3y agoIn a number of cases, yes. Whole departments are being slashed/they are exiting certain business lines so no need to pick up the slack there.
- datavirtue 3y agoIt takes banks years to exit a business after they stop brining in new customers.
- wolverine876 3y agoThe primary concern is the people who have lost jobs, and for some, careers and dreams. Some of them are probably reading HN today. But for the economy, it could be a good thing: Talent moving from moribund, unambitious, lower-return businesses to dynamic, often new ones that are hiring and expanding for an optimistic future. (I say unambitous because they are, at least in this situation, cutting costs and talent rather than investing in and taking risks for a bold future.) Unemployment is low, the economy is growing. Usually layoffs, etc. happen widely when the economy is slow and unemployment high, and then the newly unemployed have a hard time finding new jobs. If it's going to happen, in some senses now may be the perfect time for the individuals and the economy.
- AlexErrant 3y agoHow does this reconcile with "enshitification" as popular platforms with millions of users try to become profitable by removing features and paywalling access? My understanding was that the zero-interest era was the time of optimism and building new cool things.
- wnc3141 3y agoI personally don't think its bad if firms just find excuses to keep people on payroll, regardless of the strategic significance.
- pie420 3y agothat's how companies become walking zombies with entire departments that don't do anything, and eventually go under
- seizethecheese 3y agoAnd how economies become that way. In places where they’ve made it very hard to fire, the economy inevitably slows.
- octacat 3y agoNot gonna happen. If other companies say "we are firing people", other companies would do the same (unless you are apple). We've seen it before with hiring. Hire not because we need, but because everyone is hiring.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoLayoffs? Does the company have 10x the amount of people being laid off? Did it happen after performance evaluations? Yes, yes and yes? You got ranked and yanked. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitality_curve Brought to you courtesy of MBA programs and their pseudoscience. Make MBAs illegal.
- swozey 3y agoWhat would you say you do here?
- 29athrowaway 3y agoI am great at dealing with people. I deal with customers so that engineers don't have to. I have people skills! what the hell is wrong with you people?! Jump to conclusions.
- marcosdumay 3y agoWell, looks like this one is old-school, but 7% is the new 10%. Anyway, most recent layoffs look quite stupid to me (even though I can't make my mind on this one), but if you are doing a layoff, rank and yank is about as good a format as you can get.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago"Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser announced a sweeping overhaul of the third-largest U.S. bank by assets in September. The company has been left behind by peers since the 2008 financial crisis as Fraser's predecessors couldn't get a handle on expenses and is the lowest valued among the six biggest U.S. banks. In November, CNBC reported that managers and consultants involved in the effort - known internally by the code name "Project Bora Bora" - discussed job cuts of 10% in several major businesses. The company has since executed several waves of layoffs, beginning with the top layers of the bank, with another round of cuts set for Jan. 22, according to a person familiar with the matter. A Citigroup spokeswoman declined to comment."