Story 297

Citi is so toxic it’s unbelievable. It feels like being in an abusive relationship, but with work. I will never forget one day couple years ago at the peak of intense pressure from my second level manager, I was waiting to cross the street on my way to work and I had a sudden passing thought in my head that if I got slightly hit by a vehicle I could finally rest in the ER and get a break from the toxic environment. That passing thought did signal to me that something needed to change and things were not okay, because that’s not a normal thought for me at all. What happened next was as I stood up for myself and started pointing out to management that I was given an entire workload that was unusual and outside the scope of my designated role, they began a journey of pushing me out of my role, instead of promoting me to reflect the high level work I had been doing. It culminated in my manager writing false statements about my performance which impacted my compensation. When I pointed out to him the invalid information he wrote, he tried to gaslight me at first, and then said that nobody will read it, so it doesn’t matter. These are the kind of people that I have been surrounded by here. They gaslight, twist facts, backstab, throw me under the bus – anything to make themselves look good, at my expense.

My manager seems to have no clue what is going on in my project either. Every meeting he asks the same questions, that we already answered the day prior. He cannot be bothered to retain any information, nor to at least take notes to make up for his inattentiveness. He treated me like a personal secretary – would ping me randomly to join his zoom, during which he would pull up emails to him, from business or users, and ask me “what should I write?”, as if it’s my job to ghostwrite his emails, especially when he already does the bare minimum, and after we already explained things to him in our team meeting. So I lose my comp increase while I am answering manager level emails for someone paid far more than me – the epitome of insanity. He only cared about sending emails that made him look good, he only cared about taking care of visible things, and could not care less or provide any attention on the things that mattered and kept our systems running but were less visible / more internal. He would only ask us about things he was being chased for. Whenever I brought up my concerns to him, or changes we needed to make in our systems in order to prevent issues later on down the line, he could not care less about those things, and provided no assistance in helping me make sure the team worked on those things. Then when there was a production issue (that could have been prevented) suddenly he is all over it, because everyone has eyes on that now. For months, while I was away, he kept leading the team to fix production issues that kept popping up, and never once stopped and noticed that it was the same issue. Even someone less technical would notice it, if they stopped to read the emails, because it had the same or a very similar name and behavior. He never questioned it and just kept letting the team “fix” it. When I was back in and involved again, I immediately noticed that it was the same issue that arose multiple times, so I investigated and found a root cause fix that stopped the ongoing issue from recurring. However he was extremely annoyed with me when I reported it to him that it was the same issue recurring all that time, even though I was not around or involved while that was going on. He was not supportive in any meaningful way and usually was more disruptive than helpful or supportive.

In my experience that I have encountered, I see many people and teams operate in this way – just keep putting out fires with superficial “patches” and “fixes”, because it’s more important to ‘move quickly’ and visibly declare that the issue was identified and resolved, than it is to actually find the underlying root cause and implement a permanent fix for it. And nobody wonders why the same systems keep having the same problems! They just keep going in the same circle fixing the same bug, without actually improving the system. Or maybe they are all just burned out, I don’t know to be honest. You can’t even blame the technical department though, because it seems to be a result of the lack of vision, prioritization, and comprehension of real technical needs by the leaders with the purse strings that causes this. Seems like the tech budget gets cut and business, who seems clueless as to what tech actually needs, dictates what tech is allowed to work on. So even if you wanted to improve things, it’s very difficult. Or if you DO improve things, *like I did* – they may lie and say you didn’t! You can get punished for it! Even with actual evidence of the improvements! It’s an absolute circus. Meanwhile c-suite make millions in salary, millions in bonus, but the real labor done by us gets gaslit and the profits produced by us stolen by the executives instead of in our paychecks.

My second level manager once told me to *pressure* the team working for us *more*, because he didn’t believe they were working *hard enough*. Meanwhile the details were barely properly defined and requirements were constantly changing as we went along, without anyone managing to get it under control, for a variety of reasons – yet he made that their fault and their problem, which it actually was not. He was constantly ranting and blaming us about how long things took, even though the processes in place, outside of our control, actually prevent us from moving quickly, because for every step you want to take there are probably ten pages of paperwork you need to fill out. It’s like trying to drive a car to get somewhere, except you find out it’s a Flintstones car and you can only power it with your own feet and legs. Yet we had to bear the brunt of all of managements frustrations dumped onto us. It got to the point where I found myself having difficulty breathing during meetings with him because of how intense he was. I found myself seriously dreading meetings with him and with the other managers like him. I even noticed heart palpitations during some of these meetings when they would start getting accusatory and confrontational. Coworkers even checked in on me after some of those meetings because of how he was behaving towards me. It was absolutely rare to ever receive any positive feedback. Yet I worked so hard I burned out, and I delivered results on time and sometimes early for them. So toxic.

Don’t even get me started on the zoom meeting culture I have experienced here. It’s absolutely normal to be spoken over, interrupted, raised voices, harsh tones. One manager once said to me “Why are you asking such questions??” harshly, as if questions were not allowed. They were very defensive, constantly triggered, and very difficult to work with. My second level manager clearly only ever wants people to agree with what he directs. I once asked for just a tiny bit of additional time to complete some documentation and he pushed back SO hard as if I had asked for the moon. Once he did receive it, guess what? He didn’t even look at it for a whole week. Yet couldn’t give me less than 24 hours? That’s crazy. It’s just arbitrary last-minute deadlines based on their emotional mood swings, because management is awful at time management and then you pay for it; arbitrary pressure to hurry up and move faster yet get stuck waiting on the company’s own slow moving processes, so you get pressured immensely as to why things aren’t moving faster when you’re being blocked by known processes in place that you have no choice but to follow, make it make sense. Massive gaslighting.

And an extremely sexist culture, as per my experience. I’ve been in meetings where I would offer a solution or path forward, and everyone would keep debating the topic just ignoring my suggestion, then a guy would offer the same solution and suddenly everyone is listening and agreeing with him. I was in a meeting with business and my manager where I explained something to business and wanted to hear their response to me – but my manager immediately interjected after I finished speaking, repeated what I said and then changed the subject!!! Not allowing them to even respond to me. He was constantly interfering with my work and undermining me and I can’t explain to you what that does to the psyche or the spirit. He would forward emails to me that I am already receiving demanding I “do the needful and reply” – even though I am already a direct recipient of those emails, was already working on all of these tasks long before he became personally involved in order to push me out, those emails even stated no reply is necessary, and he would add zero value to the email. It seemed like he was not actually reading most of the emails. Apparently most emails he sends out, are ghost written by someone else. Another thing I notice he does in meetings is repeat the same template sayings he has to make it sound like he is doing something or knows something. It’s almost like he’s robotic, like he doesn’t actually process any information but just uses a pre-existing set of statements and questions he relies on. It’s rare to hear him say something new or incorporate specific-to-the-situation thoughtful technical details into his sentences when speaking with us. He rarely ever seems to have a technical thought or understanding of things. He would ask us the most obvious questions that should be under his purview to decide. It feels like he fully offloaded thinking, memory, and decision making onto me, as if I was his brain by proxy. Then he would take the feedback we provided to him and repeat what little he retained of it, in other meetings/emails, to make it seem like he knows something. But most often he would hold another meeting to get people to explain it to him again because he did not retain it the first several times we told him. And this isn’t coming from a personal dislike of him – some other employees have expressed some similar thoughts about his behavior as well. It’s like he is actually just smoke and mirrors.

I used to like him, before he started pushing me out of my role. He began excluding me from important calls I used to be a big part of. He then told me not to communicate with another team that is an integral part of our work. He started visibly forwarding emails to me to make it look like he is directing and controlling things now, when previously he was not involved in my work at all. He ignored majority of concerns I raised. And he started getting angry with me when I would ask him very basic questions to gain clarity. I asked him to clarify the changes happening with my responsibilities, which were obviously happening, and he got angry and accused me of not wanting him as a manager. I said nothing more than ‘I would like to understand my role responsibilities and get more clarity around that’. To go from my sentence, to what he said, is a ridiculous gaslighting psychotic leap. He tried to get me to perform tasks that were owned by other teams, and seemed upset when I raised the concern that maybe those tasks should be handled by the appropriate owning team. He was often pinging me randomly and unexpectedly to join his zoom. When I asked what was the topic of the meeting or is there an email on it so I could better prepare for the call, he flipped out and questioned if I am never available to join meetings anymore. Again, a psychotic gaslighting leap from what I actually wrote to his wild conclusion. It’s clear that management just wants you, especially a woman, to shut up and nod yes to all of their whims. God forbid you have a single thought or opinion in your head besides appeasing their every whim instantly without question!

There was a time when I was participating in leading a group of men with my coworker, and it was a catastrophe. He never huddled with me on any single topic or decision – he just set up the meetings, talked for 20 minutes barreling through everything, and then at the very end would finally ‘give me permission to speak’, asking if I had anything else to add. Which at that point, I was exhausted by his non-stop speaking for so long and there was not much more left for me to add! I tried to interrupt this process by preparing a knowledge session with the group and had to actually interrupt him when he started the meeting in order to get a word in edgewise, in order to present the information. I didn’t get more than 2 sentences in before I was rudely interrupted. They would not let me continue speaking, they could not even clearly state what their issue was as I kept asking what was the objection, and then my coworker just took over the meeting again and proceeded with his non-stop speaking for 20 minutes, disallowing me to even come close to finishing the information I was trying to present. These men left me off of meeting invites. In emails, they never addressed me, they always only addressed him. In meetings, they only addressed him, never once addressed me. I may as well have been a ghost even though I was officially meant to be a leader of this group.

Then I keep getting emails, or reading stories, about “leadership principles”, or about prizes Citi has won. Prizes in DEI??? Are you kidding me? Did they pay for that award? It’s just another level of gaslighting and adds insult to injury when you are surrounded by toxic men who couldn’t possibly see your value nor acknowledge your contributions, yet your company wins top workplace awards or any type of award like that, or sends emails about work life balance and respectful workplace environment and how leadership principles are valued. Oh, is lying valued? Is treating your reports like squeezable burn and churn fodder a value listed in there? Receiving company wide work life balance emails is comical when management themselves are sending emails showing they are working all day, all night, all weekend, and even on their PTO days, and also directly telling me that ‘this job isn’t just 9 – 5’ if I want to get promoted. I’ve seen managers send emails at 5am, 2am, 3am, on Saturday, Sunday, during PTO, etc. When do they sleep, or have a life??? I am not willing to die for this miserable job and yes, you can die from overworking.

Not long ago I tried to see if there was any way to reach out to the Women’s Network here. If there was anyone there I could speak with, who could advocate or support me in any way. The women’s network is a farce. It’s like a fake storefront, nothing inside. I found it, and there’s literally nothing it does, besides very *rarely* it may have an event with a speaker, and that’s it. Absolutely nothing else. What a sick joke.