Citadel Reviews

-Almost the entire Treasury function has turned over, including the Treasurer, in the last 18 months. People from 1-15+ years experience have resigned just to get their non-compete started, not because they found another role. The entire culture has deteriorated. -The culture is NOT a meritocracy anymore. It is extremely toxic with horrible morale. Having people THINK it’s a meritocracy might be Citadel’s best asset. In reality it operates more like a cult; once you realize you are underpaid for the work you are doing, ask for and do not get a raise, and leave, they will get a 22 year old to do your job for 50-60k and smother that guy until he realizes the same thing. They overpay for some big names here and there and make splash hires and they quietly exit and onto the next. -In line with above, management frequently gaslights you. All your problems are your own fault. Full stop. Two examples, with a manager on vacation I got buy-in from all involved teams to move a project up the priority list into the top 5 because of the potential risks to capital and regulatory reporting. When the manager came back it was moved to 31 and I was asked why it was taking so long. In another instance a developer thought a project was beneath him so I wrote the code myself and handed him the solution. Feedback from management was negative because it took too long and said I should drive more accountability into others. -Management has favorites and untouchables. Mistakes happen, but owning them and working on a solution is only a rule for some. Others never have to clean up their own mess or smell their own manure. -Citadel used to scale through technology and not headcount, but at some point in the last few years a layer of bureaucratic oafs have been installed that lack a rudimentary understanding of hedge funds, finance, markets, and internal workflows. They add no value and just assign blame to lower level employees and teams. Their inflated comp would be better served rewarding employees or hiring more developers. There is no longer any collaboration, just a lot of “That’s not my job” you would find in a bank, which makes sense because almost every director/manager level hire comes from Goldman. -Regarding technology, you’ll hear people say Citadel is a tech/data company that specializes in finance. This is not the case. IT/Dev groups are constantly gutted and turned over resulting in a bottleneck that management refuses to acknowledge. Then they gaslight you. Again, any problem you had was entirely your own; there’s no bottleneck or lack of resources, “You just aren’t pushing hard enough.” -Lack of IT resources results in numerous fire drills for mid level employees. Little can be planned or accomplished when you are playing Russian roulette with 4 in the cylinder (yes, better than a coin flip something breaks!). Employees are encouraged to come up with solutions to eliminate risks and redundancies but the project is never prioritized and then it happens again and the question of why it wasn't fixed will be asked. -Good ideas are passed up for things that are new and sexy, only to be later abandoned because they over-promise/under-deliver or just flat out suck and then they’ll revisit the solution proposed by the SME. -Work/Life balance is non-existent and makes the comp not worth it. There is no expectation of being out of office. There are alerts and texts and emails at all hours that require addressing or else. Hours were normally 7-7 on a day when nothing went wrong, which happened rarely. 2-4 times a week you’ll exceed 14 hours without any acknowledgement whatsoever. -There is little room for advancement. Initially this was okay as long as comp and responsibility kept increasing, but there is a moving invisible target. Management will pay as little as possible to keep you and keep changing the criteria for why you aren’t getting a bigger bonus. The goalpost is constantly moved to suit stiffing you. -Citadel has a decent “Comp Trap” set up where next year’s comp and bonus are communicated in November/early Dec but not paid till March. By the time March rolls around it’s only ~8 months to the next one and maybe that one will be better.

I could write a bestselling book on my experience at Citadel, but sadly no one will really know the truth because of our NDA. Let’s just say a lot of the rumors are true. Don’t trust your recruiter! They will sell you a bag of lies just to get you in the door. Don’t be blinded by the big check, you’re about to sell your soul. This company is toxic and is happy to cut you in 90 days if you don’t seem like a “culture fit”. If you want to survive, expect to change your life priorities and potentially hurt the people around you. Also, if you care about diversity this is not the company for you. Trust me when I tell you that Diversity is not and will never be a priority for Citadel.