Citigroup CEO Calls for Zoom-Free Fridays and New Bank Holiday as Pandemic Fatigue Grows (cnbc.com) 38
Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser told staff that she is banning internal video calls on Fridays, encouraging staff to set boundaries for a healthier work-life balance and instituting a firmwide holiday called Citi Reset Day as Covid pandemic fatigue takes a toll on employees. From a report: Fraser, who took over for predecessor Mike Corbat this month, told staff of the changes in a memo sent Monday afternoon to her 210,000 employees around the world, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. "The blurring of lines between home and work and the relentlessness of the pandemic workday have taken a toll on our well-being," Fraser said in the memo. "It's simply not sustainable. Since a return to any kind of new normal is still a few months away for many of us, we need to reset some of our working practices." The Citigroup memo was sent the day after Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon was forced to address his staff after an internal survey of first-year analysts, reported by CNBC last week, went viral. The survey detailed brutal working conditions at the premier investment bank, including employees' health concerns about working more than 100 hours a week, as well as more mundane issues like junior bankers being ignored in meetings.
4 day week (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's actually interesting seeing the different take between different banks.
In the UK the boss of JP Morgan wants people to return to the office so he can force them to go back to working 95 hour weeks illegally, Barclays wants them back because it has significant exposure to overpriced property in the City of London.
In contrast the likes of Nationwide, Lloyds, and HSBC have already committed to greater flexibility in working, and now Citi too.
I'm hoping these means dinosaurs like JP Morgan and Barclays wil
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No the boss like all other management are essentially useless parasites. In a remote environment, it shows that they are literally useless to actually contributing in anyway.
Lets face it the vast majority of bosses are selfish aresholes, if you work at home,
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Well if they pay me for the commuting time then ok (Score:2)
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People should be told Fridays are do some charity work day.
As long as you don't expect your bank to be open or your broker to be available.
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Yeh because 4 days a week and internet banking etc are just not enough.
Get a life, theres more to life than just prostituting your life away for another zero in your assets column.
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Grow up you idiot, surely you can understand not everything is absolute. Theres more to life than just going to work. becaues...
> Who exactly do you still want to have to work on this new day off you get?
It doesnt matter, life is about enjoying your life with family friends and more, its not about being a drone that goes to work. The western world is rich enuff, we should all be working less. Far too many people may be
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It doesnt matter, life is about enjoying your life with family friends and more, its not about being a drone that goes to work. The western world is rich enuff, we should all be working less. Far too many people may be at work, but they are NOT working, they are just waiting for time to pass. Nobody needs to shop for clothes every fucking day of the week 24/7. You dont need packages delivered every day, it shouldnt matter if it takes a few more, life will go on.
If people don't need to work as much as they do, you should start a company where they don't have to. Your employees will love you, and maybe it would show all of our employers how it's done.
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I dont care about starting my own company because like i said, i value my time and i cant be fucked trying to make myself a millionaire and rich. Im not greedy for money but i am greedy for time to do beter things with my life and family and friends.
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"meetings are a waste of time"
Meetings look like a waste of time to people that nobody wants to talk to.
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> Meetings look like a waste of time to people that nobody wants to talk to.
No meetings are a waste of time because most people are poor communicators. Take your reply its nothing more than a childish personal attack. We all know most documentation and communication is poor, just look at open source projects. Pick any dozens on github and yo u will find most have basically nothing in terms of a README. The code is even worse. Im not sure how you think a manager
Meeting free Mondays. (Score:2)
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No, it's double-meetings Mondays, because you have to catch up for the slack on Fridays :-)
CEO who doesn't actually work Sick of Zoom (Score:2)
Yeah, some rich guy who spends more time at the country club than at work is sick of his daily golf outings getting interrupted by work.
Cry me a river, dude.
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It's a she. And it's a response to the recent Goldman Sachs 'scandal' where workers complained of 95 hour work weeks and its CEO responded with "thank you for telling us" and "please continue working as hard as you can for our success." As in, thank you for making me rich. So the Citibank CEO took the opposite tack and actually acknowledged that there was burn-out amongst the staff and finding ways to deal with it.
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Except if you read the article its not doing anything other than banning "video calls" and keeping meetings to normal business hours. Something mgmt should be doing anyway.
meetings with clients and regulators will still happen on Fridays, employees will conduct meetings over the telephone to give workers a break from nonstop videoconferences
Also, since when is a "Zoom" call video and an audio call is not? Can we stop the free marketing already? Let's call a pig a pig. Either it's "meeting free Fridays" or "no-video turned on meeting Fridays". By saying "Zoom free Friday" one thinks zero meetings.
Another way to improve morale (Score:3)
The issue is 100 hours a week is just too much (Score:5, Insightful)
It is hard for me take Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser seriously. The issue is working 100 hours a week. Not doing Zoom calls on Friday is a cop out and a clever way to void dealing with the issue that we are all human and that we should not be working 100 hours a week for an employer (doing it completely voluntarily when working for yourself is different although eventually severe sleep deprivation will kill your mental health).
So how about this? Just tell people never to work more than 6 days a week and never to work more than 12 hours a day. But of course that would mean employing more people and eating into their profits. And they can burn through 20 somtheing year olds who are desperate for money to pay off the crazy debt that comes from the kind of schools that Citi hires from.
I do not agree with European style draconian restrictions on the number of hours a week a person can work. Healthy adults in high powered jobs are perfectly capable of dealing with working 50 hours a week. Sadly medicine forces interns to work crazy hours which then makes them much less caring people because they've been made to suffer and view people who cannot work a 20 hour shift as less worthy.
And as far as anyone in Citi earning below $500,000 (including bonus), they should not be working more than 50 hours a week. Expecting such a person to put in a 12+ hour day, 5 days a week is simply not acceptable.
This reminds me of story in the UK:
"In July this year, he moved to London from his home town of Staufen near the Swiss border to take part in a summer internship with Bank of America Merrill Lynch that would pay him £6,000. It was a highly competitive environment: Moritz had fought 1,500 other candidates to get one of two places in the investment banking division. The hours were brutal. Working through the night was almost a rite of passage.
In August, Moritz was nearing the end of his seven-week placement. He had shown himself to be so capable that the bank was preparing to offer him a full-time job as a £45,000 a year analyst after his graduation.
Over a 72-hour period, he got a taxi back from the office to his flat in Bethnal Green, east London, at around 5am each morning. He would then shower briefly before returning to his desk. This exhausting ritual is known in banking circles as the "magic roundabout" – so-called because the taxi driver will sometimes wait outside while an intern washes, puts on a fresh shirt and re-emerges blinking in the dawn light."
He died of overwork at age 21 just to get a £45,000 a year job. The bank no doubt put subtle pressure on him.
https://www.theguardian.com/bu... [theguardian.com]
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Labeling European labor laws as draconian seems a bit over the top. The way I see it, their governments care more about the citizens than what we've got in the US.
I don't want to take away the right of someone to work as many hours as they want but I do believe that anything over 40 hours must get OT pay, even for salaried workers.
I don't think it's a coincidence that countries like US and Japan have higher rates of mental illness and suicide and rank relativ
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So you're writing her off after 3 weeks?
Yes. I worked for Citi the last time this "we keep killing junior bankers" thing came around. Their solution then: you had to get a waiver to work saturdays. SO what happened? They just rubber-stamped waivers for all the junior bankers. Same will happen here.
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Re:The issue is 100 hours a week is just too much (Score:5, Informative)
I occasionally run 100+ hour weeks. Regularly 60-70 hour. But it's not for the money.. I'm in healthcare, and this last year was brutal on the front line.. But, at the end of the day, it's my choice, nobody's been pushing me to do it, and it's not for profit.. It's so I actually have the time to sort stuff out the right way to give the patients a better chance of leaving the hospital the right way.
I still thrive on it to a degree, but I certainly feel it a lot more than I did when I was young, and definitely know I've been pushing it when I take a rest (for some people, this pace is fun; just not for most of us).
No way in hell that I'd think of doing that kind of regime for something as trivial as money these days..
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Regularly 60-70 hour. But it's not for the money.. I'm in healthcare, and this last year was brutal on the front line.. But, at the end of the day, it's my choice, nobody's been pushing me to do it, and it's not for profit.. It's so I actually have the time to sort stuff out the right way to give the patients a better chance of leaving the hospital the right way.
Thank you.
Re: The issue is 100 hours a week is just too much (Score:2)
Competition is the point (Score:3)
Most of the work these analysts do is the very definition of bullshit job (reports nobody even reads). The whole point of these companies is to create a human pressure cooker out of which the alpha dogs can be skimmed off the top. There is no shortage of money at the top of these firms (they essentially control the money supply) the issue is finding out who should be allowed into the upper echelons of the system/society.
Just look at what we were able to do (space program, all the infrastructure, the war eff
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Yeah, fuck that. I've always maintained that you pay me hourly until the salary pay exceeds what I would make with overtime, assuming a 60 hour week. I assume that anyone wanting to pay me salary has some expectation of hours beyond 40, and I factor that into my price accordingly.
If I'm worth it or you need hours that bad, you'll pony up. Otherwise you won't. Neither of us has to die for the work.
Re: The issue is 100 hours a week is just too much (Score:2)
And as far as anyone in Citi earning below $500,000 (including bonus), they should not be working more than 50 hours a week.
European here.
You misspelled "month".
No, seriously... 50 hrs a week? The fuck is wrong with you guys?! Don't you have any private lives, or do you really, really hate your wives and kids that much thay you don't want to hang around home anymore?
Next thing you're be telling me that 2 weeks of vacation is great 'n plenty.
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And as far as anyone in Citi earning below $500,000 (including bonus), they should not be working more than 50 hours a week.
European here.
You misspelled "month".
No, seriously... 50 hrs a week? The fuck is wrong with you guys?! Don't you have any private lives, or do you really, really hate your wives and kids that much thay you don't want to hang around home anymore?
Next thing you're be telling me that 2 weeks of vacation is great 'n plenty.
I've worked 50-60 hours a week most of my adult life, often more. I've raised a family and participated in it fully. And had a social life as well.
But sorry - if you aren't capable of that - don't ask people who are more capable "what the fuck is wrong" with them.
It's called being a professional. At some point, unless you are a day laborer, you get involved with things that happen when they need to happen. I might spend a long day at work, then attend a meeting with a social that evening. But the stuff
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How about "Crime Free Fridays" (Score:2, Insightful)
Like: In May 2015 the Justice Department announced that Citibank was one of a group of banks pleading guilty to criminal charges of conspiring to fix foreign currency rates. Citi was fined $925 million (and another $342 million by the Federal Reserve) and put on probation for three years. The SEC gave it a waiver from a rule that would have barred it from remaining in the securities business.
Or Like: Citigroup is fined $400 million over ‘l
More doublespeak (Score:3)
The same story at where I work. "We want the people to take time off as much as they need, it is important during this pandemic to be able to enjoy some time off work. Therefore, all public holidays are mandatory for all staff and contractors and we expect all to use all their days off." In reality, they just want people to bill less hours, because the economy is shit. Apparently businesses can't be honest with their employees anymore.
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What they really want is the workers in as good shape as they can be once things open up.. Everyone knows that the majority of the potential workforce has taken a thorough beating through this year, and one of my priorities has been making sure my team take regular holidays, even if it's just time away from the office because there's nowhere to go... It's been pretty brutal on everyone to keep a pace going, and all the stressors you don't even really notice, all build up.. Getting someone away from it al
Bank Holiday? There should be no US holidays . . . (Score:2)
other than July 4. Why not give workers X number of floating days off. Take them when you want as personal, vacation or sick days.
Just like 'No Email' days (Score:2)