5 ms·

11k Citi employees fired. Help get them hired in tech.

65 points by darrellsilver 14y ago

mseebach 14y ago
Where's the indication that NYC tech talent was hit in any significant way? From the linked article: About 35 percent of the fourth-quarter costs are tied to eliminating 6,200 jobs in consumer banking, with operations set to be sold or scaled back in Pakistan, Paraguay, Romania, Turkey and Uruguay, according to the statement. Branches will be reduced in five other nations, including 44 in the U.S.
- untog 14y ago
  It might be that no-one in NYC was fired. But I imagine that the people employed by Citi in the city (zing) are still a little nervous about their long-term prospects. When shareholders cheer people being fired, you have to wonder if you're next. That said, it does make Thinkful's offer to "ex-Citi employees" a little less likely to be taken up.
  - Aco- 14y ago
    If that's the case then thinkful might want to consider rewording "Your new CEO just fired _you_ and..." on that landing page
  - mseebach 14y ago
    I strongly doubt that anyone in Citi you'd want to hire for a startup is working under any kind of illusion that Citi is an employment project. If your unit isn't profitable (enough), it's shut. Of course the stock market likes that - or rather, dislikes the opposite.
    - kyllo 14y ago
      I read the message as "Your industry sucks to work in now, doesn't it? Why not come to our website to study web programming online so you can come join the tech startup industry instead?"
      - mseebach 14y ago
        That's a very charitable reading. It's a PR play for the training outfit, and not a terribly good one, IMO.
        kyllo 14y ago
        The post is an advertisement to be sure. But they are being somewhat charitable themselves by giving their service away for free to ex-Citi employees.
        bitcartel 14y ago
        Ah, but how many get the full service, and not just online course material? How do they scale their "one-on-one help" to 11k people? Thinkful only get paid when a hiring manager employs somebody that they introduced. If I were to be an old curmudgeon, this is PR off the back of bad news, to try and scalp potential leads and resumes.
phene 14y ago
I can only have so much sympathy for people who choose to work at such a terrible company.
alanbyrne 14y ago
Citi was one of the best places I have ever worked. Sure it was tightly controlled with various security precautions, change control and the other banking regulator requirements which made it impossible to be a hacker and to get things done quickly. But as a workplace it left me with fond memories.
- darrellsilver 14y ago
  Awesome. Were you recently laid off?
- K2h 14y ago
  What did you like about it?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
arbuge 14y ago
But would they be good matches for tech jobs? On what basis are you reaching that conclusion?
- darrellsilver 14y ago
  Excellent question. Simply put: We follow where growing companies are looking for talent. That's our indicator. Banks, hedge funds and other parts of the financial sector use a hell of a lot of fancy tech (they're the first "big data" after all), and there's a lot of expertise that's been locked up there for too long. When I left finance (4.5 years, 4 years ago... hells yeah) I had all sorts of engineering skills, but knew nothing of the companies, how to evaluate employers, or what exact tools were most in demand or growing. Helping people answer those questions more quickly than I could is our mission.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    One thing I like about finance is that they are better than most corporations at respecting and evaluating intelligence. They don't reject the 140+ IQ set outright in the way that most corporate environments (even some startups) do. Financial companies may restrain and underemploy such people with bureaucratic nonsense, but they also pay for the pain. The problem with the developer economy is that paid work has very low career efficiency. There's just a lot of glop work to go around, and most engineers don't have the political pull to get past it and on to the interesting stuff, which they're perceived as underqualified for because of their track record of crappy work (even if done well). Most engineers have about a 75% slack ratio in their careers, which prevents them from ever getting really good. But give a decently smart and motivated engineer 5 years of full autonomy and you'll have the guys and gals that people make Chuck Norris jokes about.
sturadnidge 14y ago
At the risk of sounding like a heartless bastard upholding tired old stereotypes, enterprise scale retail banking is probably the last place the majority of startups should consider a 'talent pool'. In places like Citi, change is something to be feared, silos are everywhere and 'lean' is probably unheard of (at least in IT circles). Kudos for at least providing an opportunity for people to improve themselves though. And the sentiment of course.
- bhntr3 14y ago
  Banks are a hard place to work in IT. But the pay is good. In New York, I've seen a lot of good engineers get sucked in. I worked as a consultant at Citi for a year. I wouldn't quite write someone off because they worked at a bank. It can be hard to walk away from 33% of your salary to do something more fulfilling. Just because they exist in that environment doesn't mean their passion is dead. EDIT: By the way, I work at a Silicon Valley engineering driven startup working to fix financial software. If you have passion and want to start solving the problem rather than contribute to it, we're hiring great engineers. I know there are some in the big banks. http://careers.addepar.com http://careers.addepar.com or R2@addepar.com
  - sturadnidge 14y ago
    I totally agree, I consider myself in that category. Although to be fair I'm in IB, not retail.
    - lix2333 14y ago
      Any exit plan yet? I'm in the same boat.
- SatvikBeri 14y ago
  I have kind of mixed feelings about this. I worked at Citi, and the average person there is actually pretty smart. They're just tied down by all the bureaucracy, which ends up killing their creativity and motivation. This can turn into an advantage once you leave, though. Once you join a decent company you get very motivated to do your best, because you never want to go back.
michaelochurch 14y ago
This is brilliant marketing by Thinkful.
gprasanth 14y ago
On another (un?)related note, Citibank ran a 'Cyber Monday' in India where "it would provide discounts of up to 60 per cent" http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-12-02/news/35546881_1_citibank-plans-indian-market-ecommerce-players http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-12-02/news...
eurodance 14y ago
"MVC, Backbone, wireframing ... Django, Rails, Node, Hadoop ... Amazon Web Services & Heroku ... Git in a Nutshell Continuous deployment & TDD" They should teach more than just the latest (popular) concepts/languages like node, ruby, python. There seems to be little mention of important concepts such as data types, pointers, and OOP.
- kyllo 14y ago
  Nothing wrong with learning Javascript and Ruby or Python off the bat instead of starting with something like Java or C/C++. But you might want to start the course with stuff like programming language basics, database basics, and SQL if they're coming from non-programming positions. It's also a little overkill to cover Django, Rails, AND Node.js in one course, isn't it? I guess I'm not sure if the ad is targeted at Citigroup's software/IT people (who already know a lot of this stuff and are probably not the folks getting laid off) or the other (finance/accounting/admin/sales/customer service/operations) people (who probably need to start from the square-one basics of web programming).
  - darrellsilver 14y ago
    Fair question. We don't think you can learn from scratch any of these topics in three weeks, let alone all of them, to be employable at any of them. What we're talking about are people who are proficient in a given language or topic already, and who want to see a crash course, and get a taste, before deciding what to do next. Our candidates are basically already very employable, but there's an extra risk we help employers avoid: that a new hire won't enjoy or become proficient in this new subject quickly (read: cheaply). Thinkful is all about cost savings for employers, and candidates finding what they're really interested in. Know java really, really well? Maybe you'll enjoy scala. But perhaps give it a trial run for a few weeks (along with some other cool stuff) before jumping in to a job for several years.
- Shorel 14y ago
  I would add regular expressions and anonymous functions to that list.
rbadaro 14y ago
From my experience working at a large Investment Bank, the strong performers normally do keep up to date with new technology developments or have otherwise a strong base knowledge that allows them to pick up new things by themselves. The masses largely prefer to have a corporate job for as much pay as possible - this was the first workplace where I heard a number of people explicitly say they are only there for the money and in some cases actually want the redundancy packages. In my view the good opportunity for other companies in these situations is that a number of stronger performers decide to leave by themselves when this happens, for multiple reasons - they are overworked because their teams are reduced, low morale, etc. These are the ones that are interesting to capture.
themckman 14y ago
Am I the only one that read that as "Dear Citi employees, sucks you got fired. You're probably bad at what you do; let us help."?

65 points by darrellsilver 14y ago

Where's the indication that NYC tech talent was hit in any significant way? From the linked article: About 35 percent of the fourth-quarter costs are tied to eliminating 6,200 jobs in consumer banking, with operations set to be sold or scaled back in Pakistan, Paraguay, Romania, Turkey and Uruguay, according to the statement. Branches will be reduced in five other nations, including 44 in the U.S.

untog 14y ago
It might be that no-one in NYC was fired. But I imagine that the people employed by Citi in the city (zing) are still a little nervous about their long-term prospects. When shareholders cheer people being fired, you have to wonder if you're next. That said, it does make Thinkful's offer to "ex-Citi employees" a little less likely to be taken up.
- Aco- 14y ago
  If that's the case then thinkful might want to consider rewording "Your new CEO just fired _you_ and..." on that landing page
- mseebach 14y ago
  I strongly doubt that anyone in Citi you'd want to hire for a startup is working under any kind of illusion that Citi is an employment project. If your unit isn't profitable (enough), it's shut. Of course the stock market likes that - or rather, dislikes the opposite.
  - kyllo 14y ago
    I read the message as "Your industry sucks to work in now, doesn't it? Why not come to our website to study web programming online so you can come join the tech startup industry instead?"
    - mseebach 14y ago
      That's a very charitable reading. It's a PR play for the training outfit, and not a terribly good one, IMO.
      - kyllo 14y ago
        The post is an advertisement to be sure. But they are being somewhat charitable themselves by giving their service away for free to ex-Citi employees.
        bitcartel 14y ago
        Ah, but how many get the full service, and not just online course material? How do they scale their "one-on-one help" to 11k people? Thinkful only get paid when a hiring manager employs somebody that they introduced. If I were to be an old curmudgeon, this is PR off the back of bad news, to try and scalp potential leads and resumes.

phene 14y ago

I can only have so much sympathy for people who choose to work at such a terrible company.

alanbyrne 14y ago

Citi was one of the best places I have ever worked. Sure it was tightly controlled with various security precautions, change control and the other banking regulator requirements which made it impossible to be a hacker and to get things done quickly. But as a workplace it left me with fond memories.

darrellsilver 14y ago
Awesome. Were you recently laid off?
K2h 14y ago
What did you like about it?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

arbuge 14y ago

But would they be good matches for tech jobs? On what basis are you reaching that conclusion?

darrellsilver 14y ago
Excellent question. Simply put: We follow where growing companies are looking for talent. That's our indicator. Banks, hedge funds and other parts of the financial sector use a hell of a lot of fancy tech (they're the first "big data" after all), and there's a lot of expertise that's been locked up there for too long. When I left finance (4.5 years, 4 years ago... hells yeah) I had all sorts of engineering skills, but knew nothing of the companies, how to evaluate employers, or what exact tools were most in demand or growing. Helping people answer those questions more quickly than I could is our mission.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  One thing I like about finance is that they are better than most corporations at respecting and evaluating intelligence. They don't reject the 140+ IQ set outright in the way that most corporate environments (even some startups) do. Financial companies may restrain and underemploy such people with bureaucratic nonsense, but they also pay for the pain. The problem with the developer economy is that paid work has very low career efficiency. There's just a lot of glop work to go around, and most engineers don't have the political pull to get past it and on to the interesting stuff, which they're perceived as underqualified for because of their track record of crappy work (even if done well). Most engineers have about a 75% slack ratio in their careers, which prevents them from ever getting really good. But give a decently smart and motivated engineer 5 years of full autonomy and you'll have the guys and gals that people make Chuck Norris jokes about.

sturadnidge 14y ago

At the risk of sounding like a heartless bastard upholding tired old stereotypes, enterprise scale retail banking is probably the last place the majority of startups should consider a 'talent pool'. In places like Citi, change is something to be feared, silos are everywhere and 'lean' is probably unheard of (at least in IT circles). Kudos for at least providing an opportunity for people to improve themselves though. And the sentiment of course.

bhntr3 14y ago
Banks are a hard place to work in IT. But the pay is good. In New York, I've seen a lot of good engineers get sucked in. I worked as a consultant at Citi for a year. I wouldn't quite write someone off because they worked at a bank. It can be hard to walk away from 33% of your salary to do something more fulfilling. Just because they exist in that environment doesn't mean their passion is dead. EDIT: By the way, I work at a Silicon Valley engineering driven startup working to fix financial software. If you have passion and want to start solving the problem rather than contribute to it, we're hiring great engineers. I know there are some in the big banks. http://careers.addepar.com http://careers.addepar.com or R2@addepar.com
- sturadnidge 14y ago
  I totally agree, I consider myself in that category. Although to be fair I'm in IB, not retail.
  - lix2333 14y ago
    Any exit plan yet? I'm in the same boat.
SatvikBeri 14y ago
I have kind of mixed feelings about this. I worked at Citi, and the average person there is actually pretty smart. They're just tied down by all the bureaucracy, which ends up killing their creativity and motivation. This can turn into an advantage once you leave, though. Once you join a decent company you get very motivated to do your best, because you never want to go back.

michaelochurch 14y ago

This is brilliant marketing by Thinkful.

gprasanth 14y ago

On another (un?)related note, Citibank ran a 'Cyber Monday' in India where "it would provide discounts of up to 60 per cent" http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-12-02/news/35546881_1_citibank-plans-indian-market-ecommerce-players http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-12-02/news...

eurodance 14y ago

"MVC, Backbone, wireframing ... Django, Rails, Node, Hadoop ... Amazon Web Services & Heroku ... Git in a Nutshell Continuous deployment & TDD" They should teach more than just the latest (popular) concepts/languages like node, ruby, python. There seems to be little mention of important concepts such as data types, pointers, and OOP.

kyllo 14y ago
Nothing wrong with learning Javascript and Ruby or Python off the bat instead of starting with something like Java or C/C++. But you might want to start the course with stuff like programming language basics, database basics, and SQL if they're coming from non-programming positions. It's also a little overkill to cover Django, Rails, AND Node.js in one course, isn't it? I guess I'm not sure if the ad is targeted at Citigroup's software/IT people (who already know a lot of this stuff and are probably not the folks getting laid off) or the other (finance/accounting/admin/sales/customer service/operations) people (who probably need to start from the square-one basics of web programming).
- darrellsilver 14y ago
  Fair question. We don't think you can learn from scratch any of these topics in three weeks, let alone all of them, to be employable at any of them. What we're talking about are people who are proficient in a given language or topic already, and who want to see a crash course, and get a taste, before deciding what to do next. Our candidates are basically already very employable, but there's an extra risk we help employers avoid: that a new hire won't enjoy or become proficient in this new subject quickly (read: cheaply). Thinkful is all about cost savings for employers, and candidates finding what they're really interested in. Know java really, really well? Maybe you'll enjoy scala. But perhaps give it a trial run for a few weeks (along with some other cool stuff) before jumping in to a job for several years.
Shorel 14y ago
I would add regular expressions and anonymous functions to that list.

rbadaro 14y ago

From my experience working at a large Investment Bank, the strong performers normally do keep up to date with new technology developments or have otherwise a strong base knowledge that allows them to pick up new things by themselves. The masses largely prefer to have a corporate job for as much pay as possible - this was the first workplace where I heard a number of people explicitly say they are only there for the money and in some cases actually want the redundancy packages. In my view the good opportunity for other companies in these situations is that a number of stronger performers decide to leave by themselves when this happens, for multiple reasons - they are overworked because their teams are reduced, low morale, etc. These are the ones that are interesting to capture.

themckman 14y ago

Am I the only one that read that as "Dear Citi employees, sucks you got fired. You're probably bad at what you do; let us help."?