Pluspunten
Better salary than other service based companies.. if you are fortunate enough and good negotiator.
Minpunten
If you are planning to join Citi India (CSIL) and trying to collect information, I would recommend to please read it till end, although it might be bit lengthy. First thing, what is CSIL. Its one of the two legal entities of Citicorp in India (Citibank & CSIL). The idea of forming this company was plain and simple – Cost Saving. As Citi had outsourced most of its IT business to other IT service companies, So by cost perspective it made sense to top management that what if we start our own IT service firm in a low cost country like India and in-source some of the IT business back to Citi. So, CSIL was formed as a regular IT service organization which will hire IT people, get the project, deliver it to Citi and get paid by Citi by number of hours their employee spent on execution of that task..like any other service company. Make sense to save cost, but does everyone in Citi on-boarded by this idea... HELL NO. People sitting in US at middle management has their own agenda, Vendors who are in Citi for years and suppose to handover their tasks has their own agenda, people sitting here in CSIL has their own and this has started a mess rather than a place to work. Let me explain why. Most of the Citi IT employees in US are Indian. They are there for many years and when they started to realize that if things will be started getting delivered from India, ultimately they will be asked to go back. Whats the point of paying a manager in US when his entire or most of the team is in India. This started a triangular fight for survival. Companies which are handling Citi's IT for long are not happily handover their task to CSIL for obvious reasons, IT managers sitting in US are supporting them so that they can see CSIL fail and stay put in US. They started recruiting those vendor resources on Citi's payroll in US and building a team there to justify that some critical tasks are being handled by Citi Employees and the management at CSIL India is fighting to get projects from Citi and show them as delivered to prove their significance. So, when you join CSIL, first you have to fight for good work that is not at all there. Only substandard work that Citi employees in US or their vendors doesn't want to do, comes to CSIL. So after 8-10 years if you was asked to do work that is not going to add anything in your career, its not logical to do just for money. Obviously CSIL is paying better then Indian IT service companies because they are replacing people sitting in US by CSIL so even if they are paying little bit extra, its just a fraction of US pay. But the main thing is 'work and learning' and only thing you can learn is office politics to get some relevant work so that at the end of year you have to show something. The worst nightmare (which is the most of the case in CSIL) is if your manager is sitting in US. Since he/she doesn't like the idea of CSIL for the reason I explained above, he might schedule a call at mid-night. If top management is forcing vendors to handover some important project to CSIL, your call might be scheduled at their post lunch hours, so you have to be awake till 2 AM and see call gets canceled at 1.50 AM. Everything is happening here because everyone is trying to survive and save their jobs. You might get a designation which might be so fascinating like AVP or VP but get ready to be dictated by these vendor resources because most of them are in Citi for 8-10 years and god know what they are doing for so long in US. Now the management of CSIL, they are already amused and just trying to save their highly paid jobs. In every management call, they have to listen that this center is not performing, attrition rate is always around 30%, so why should not close this center or sell it to some other IT service provider. With the reputation CSIL is building, it will not take long that either CSIL or some of the units that are not performing will be sold off. And for this reason, it seems they are not investing much on this center. Very simple things, like there are no automated HR software..even if you have to declare your investments, it will be just in a homemade portal and after declaring you can't view it ever again!!! People are sitting in meeting rooms as the place is cramped etc etc. Obviously, CSIL is just an experiment and if you are going to join it, please be ready to be a part of that experiment. There are lots of other things. If you know anyone there, just pickup the phone and ask how bad it is. And even after going through this review, you are going to join Citi for any reason – Welcome to the mess and please be sure to get an exit plan ready :).