Hey Everyone, These goodbye letters usually have fraudulent cheese dripping off of them so I’ll try to make this one a little bit more genuine, interesting, and most importantly, purposeful. Today is my last day with Citi. This was the best experience of my life and I’m devastated to be moving on. Jokes aside, there were some valuable takeaways from my experience here and I think I would be doing everyone a disservice if I didn’t share. The highlights were largely the people I was able to interact with all along the way. Sometimes sharing a common struggle brings people together and if anything that’s what I value the most about my time here, the relationships that were forged with some of my co-workers. Some of the folks I’ve had the pleasure to work with in the past have an understanding of what doesn’t work here, why, and also full blown solutions on how to fix these issues. What will happen when people care to listen? Who truly are our experts? This needs to be re-evaluated heavily and a lot of mouths need to become ears. We are wasting intellectual talent by forcing the bright shining stars to listen to direction from incumbent leadership that couldn’t mentally compete with these kids on even their finest day. It’s been this way for the entire duration of my stay and over time the bright shining stars decide to go shine elsewhere or they burn out thinking they can’t even help this place even if they tried. The good news is that if people band together this is all fixable and morale can be high but being smart and having ideas is only part of the puzzle. Voice them all, be the squeaky wheel! If everyone is pushing the needle forward you can’t be ignored and things will improve. Much of the time if I recognized something as silly or broken and said anything about it, I felt like the whole room looked at me like I was an alien or a bad seed, probably the very same way this e-mail will be received by some. “Don’t rock the boat” isn’t applicable when the boat is sinking, there is nothing to be afraid of! It’s very easy to say yes to everything and fight for nothing, but is it working for the collective group professionally or personally? No, it’s not. Everyone leaves, nobody smiles here ever… it doesn’t have to be like this. I sincerely hope it’s figured out for everyone involved and that everyone is put in a position to reach their full potential because there is so much of it here! Getting the talent usually is a problem, not wasting it. “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do” – Steve Jobs I am grateful for the opportunity none the less and will be watching from afar hoping to hear about wonderful changes. As opposed to waiting for it, I really do think you all can be the change itself. This isn’t meant to whine about the past, for that e-mail would be even longer…. it’s more or less to pump you all up to make a better future and I really, sincerely hope you all do. I’m connected to majority of you on Facebook already but feel free to add me if we have not. If there are any questions about anything, don’t hesitate to ask me as I have no problem assisting how I can. I want everyone to do well here. Thanks for reading and being my co-worker throughout this adventure.
