Story 19

Here’s a legendary Citi story: A male MD known for bullying called a female peer an expletive in a team meeting. A complaint was filed; it was investigated and confirmed to be true. But the complainant was told that he “was misunderstood / didn’t mean it.” It was later confirmed by a colleague who had…

Coercive control at work is not bad management. It is not a personality clash. It is a pattern of behavior — deliberate, directed, and purposeful. I experienced this at Citi, in USPB Risk Management — under a former “manager” himself working under a known bully and harasser. As a sustained and consistent pattern directed specifically…

Unemployable Elsewhere: How Tribalism Breeds A Parasitic Culture There is a particular kind of organizational failure that accumulates in meetings that resolve nothing, in systems built without use cases, in team members that cannot self-manage because no one above them is managing either. An Agile coach, brought in to assess team productivity, estimated approximately thirty…

The Director Who Doesn’t Know What He Doesn’t Know There is a particular kind of incompetence that announces itself through enthusiasm directed at the wrong audience. A Director came to share his excitement. He had been given exposure — access to senior leadership. Risk scenarios for the CCAR process were being presented for approval. Senior…

I am shaking as I write this. I have spent a long time suppressing what I have experienced, largely out of fear. Fear of retaliation, fear of attaching my name to something that could have consequences for my career. I am a current employee based in Florida and have worked on the Technology side of…

I was recruited to Citi in early 2023. At my first company mixer, during a conversation with three female Managing Directors, they openly discussed HR’s flagrant hostility toward women. Spent the next two years networking my way back to my former firm and escaped in 2025. Don’t understand how this isn’t a risk issue for…