Citigroup Plans To Slash IT Contractors, Hire Staff To Improve Controls (reuters.com) 23
An anonymous reader shares a report: Citigroup plans to dramatically reduce its reliance on IT contractors and hire thousands of employees for IT as the lender grapples with regulatory punishments over data governance and deficient controls. Citigroup's head of technology Tim Ryan told staff in recent weeks that the bank aims to cut back external contractors to 20% of those working in IT from the current 50%, according to an internal presentation to employees seen by Reuters.
The briefing did not give a precise time horizon for the changes. As part of the overhaul, Citi will replenish the ranks by hiring more staff, and aims to have 50,000 employees in technology, up from 48,000 in 2024, the presentation showed. "Citi is growing our internal technology capabilities to support our strategy to improve safety and soundness, enable revenue growth and drive efficiencies," Citi said in a statement to Reuters.
The briefing did not give a precise time horizon for the changes. As part of the overhaul, Citi will replenish the ranks by hiring more staff, and aims to have 50,000 employees in technology, up from 48,000 in 2024, the presentation showed. "Citi is growing our internal technology capabilities to support our strategy to improve safety and soundness, enable revenue growth and drive efficiencies," Citi said in a statement to Reuters.
Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
They did the needful thing.
Re: (Score:2)
They did the needful.
FTFY
Re: (Score:2)
Issuing a press release to sucker investors? They did it, all right.
But the story says they "plan" to do this thing, so they haven't actually done anything yet, and they haven't even announced a schedule.
Good for them (Score:3)
Hopefully others follow
and how many will move from contractor to in house (Score:3)
and how many will move from contractor to in house doing the same job they are doing now?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:and how many will move from contractor to in ho (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe they can even innovate and employ in-house contractors. Aim for the sky and put your employees in the cloud.
Damnit, it's only just this moment that I've realized it: "Work from Home" suffered from poor branding. Workers should have been selling it as huge savings for the company by "putting your employees in the cloud"!
Re: (Score:2)
Work from Home" suffered from poor branding. Workers should have been selling it as huge savings for the company by "putting your employees in the cloud"!
ahh, the magic of marketing!
Re: (Score:2)
"putting your employees in the cloud"
Labor as a Service
You don't know how close to the truth that is (Score:2)
Consultants on "rolling contracts" is a common way to artificially boost average revenue per employee (ARPE). They're effectively employees requiring four weeks' notice by the company or consultant to terminate the contract, but pay is based on number of days worked (no holiday pay) and the rate per day is higher than salaried employees.
Re: (Score:3)
and how many will move from contractor to in house doing the same job they are doing now?
That's fine and Citi will then have more direct and immediate control over them than they did when they were contractors.
My gosh (Score:2, Redundant)
Re: My gosh (Score:2)
To be fair, you'd likely have similar issues in plumbing if every toilet and pipe install was completely bespoke. Plumbing contractors aren't going to be able to deal with something like a medieval castle's plumbing.
Re: Pay people directly instead of middlemen (Score:2)
If you're offshoring, it's not that expensive. I was working at a company making about $165k, but my overseas colleagues were making closer to $30k. Even with overhead of outsourcing, it was a good deal.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine.
Liability (Score:2)
Software liability (corporate) would be good for domestic careers (corporate).
It might be an overall bad idea but on this narrow aspect they'd stop outsourcing to lowest-bidders in overseas sweatshops.
I never understood out-sourcing (Score:2)
In my experience, decent IT staff can look out for a company's best intere
Re: (Score:2)
Having worked in a few financial organisations, it's possible that many of the 50% are individuals working for themselves, rather than an outsourced company providing multiple staff.
The benefit for the individual contractor is a decent daily rate (versus being permie) and not having to worry (too much) about the corporate nonsense that goes with any large organisation. The benefit for the company is the downsides for the individual: no severance, short notice to cancel contract, no holiday pay, no training,
Re: I never understood out-sourcing (Score:2)
If your organization is not a tech organization, it is quite likely you could build an in house team that is generally incompetent. And you won't have any way to know how to fix the problem.
Instead of putting $X millions into building an in house team (which may be money pissed into the sink), you go to a team that's already built, already has the organization needed, already knows how to deliver, etc.
You also avoid any sort of corporate politics around building the team. It's just numbers: $ out vs solutio
Bringing people in house doesn't fix bad mgmt (Score:3)
If your management (executives) thought it was a great idea to outsource half of its core work, that management is not doing so in a vacuum. Those executives are tasked by the board and higher-ups, to cut costs, at any cost. They keep their jobs by doing what they are told. Now they are blaming outsourcing for their incompetence. Yeah, outsourcing doesn't help, but I'm betting that the incompetence goes way deeper than the external contractors.
Hired in India (Score:2)
Chase did the same 2-decades ago! (Score:2)
I used to work in NYC Finance and Chase did the same exact thing about 2-decades ago because they found the exact same problems with the cheaper outsourced consultants and contractors.
They even went full retard and actually did out-source almost all of their employees for a few years only to have to back-source and bring them back in-house as employees again after they suffered from some major project failures and outages. Of course those people who got sling-shotted lost their seniority and work time towa
Something doesn't add up (Score:2)