Worth the Read - The Grass Is Pretty Brown in Treasury Department - Recensione dipendente - Dipendente anonimo presso Citadel

-Working at Citadel as an associate is equivalent to being a vice-president (or higher) at a bank while getting paid as if you are an analyst. Have also heard the joke that Citadel's biggest arbitrage is actually underpaying employees for the level of responsibility/work. -As others have mentioned, the culture over the past five months has deteriorated at a shocking pace with the exit of the prior treasurer and entrance of the new treasurer. Departures have been rampant and many that have been here for some time are currently just waiting for an opportune time to exit. -Witnessed the new treasurer state: "if you are infected with coronavirus and give it to someone else at the firm you will be fired." -The firm has done a great job at attracting talent by fooling the public with a deteriorating brand name and a false meritocracy. Unfortunately, it doesn't take long for this sad reality to set in once you are in the door and have most likely signed a 6-18 month non-compete. It's not unheard-of to see employment tenor's less than 5 months. Multiple big name hires have started during the past 3 years and left the firm in less than 7 months. If you google search this phrase: "executive leaves citadel months" you can find plenty of examples. -Looking for work life balance? Stay away, multiple teams are now down to skeleton crews where they are barely keeping above water, some are now fully underwater and are holding massive amounts of key man risk. Operations teams average 15-16 hour days plus weekends with counterparts constantly escalating to managers due to the excessive number of issues. Currently, there are numerous teams where individuals are unable to take one single day of vacation until more hires are made. One team specifically needed an individual to work everyday while he had coronavirus due to the abysmal amount of coverage. -One of the ops teams specifically has turned over almost 300% in the last 3.5 years. An already abnormally lean team consisting of eight full time, experienced, employees is now running at three full time employees plus a couple interns. -Politics have approached that of working at a bank, especially since every single new hire now comes from Goldman. It's surprising that the firm hasn't been sued yet for the egregious amount of people that have come in directly from GS. Working in treasury under these conditions now provides you with the opportunity to participate in most, if not all, of the firms downside and little to none of the firms upside. Additionally, this situation has created a "too many chiefs and not enough indians" scenario and has created a culture of passing blame and work around to any other team except your own. -The number of driven and highly skilled individuals that have left in the past 6 months and more specifically, during coronavirus with no role lined up should tell you everything you need to know about working here see linkedin comment above ^. -The firm has figured out the exact minimum compensation formula to keep most from quitting immediately after bonuses are released. Furthermore, bonuses are strategically paid out later than almost all other firms on the street. This delay, advantageously places you behind the other finance professionals looking to leave at competing firms that have been interviewing since Nov, Dec, Jan, & Feb. By the time you start looking elsewhere and get serious on exiting, the recruiting market is saturated, and months have passed. After enough time you begin to have a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, next year's bonus they will truly take care of you for your efforts and that you should just stick it out another 6 months or so to find out. Unfortunately, this cycle will continue year after year until you give up all hope and realized you've been underpaid the whole time. -For a firm that prides itself on being a front runner when it comes to IT, this idea seems to have been lost some years ago. As others have mentioned just getting through the day requires significant levels of manual effort on simple tasks that should've been automated long ago but have not due to lack of resources. IT resources for valuable projects are highly strained and are often passed over to be applied to wasteful projects that are applicable to banks, not hedge funds.