Citadel reviews

It is very unhappy place to work. The employed are needlessly stressed, harassed and burdened with busy non-productive work. The work at citadel is a constant struggle with legacy technology and management. The primary focus is to produce a lot of mediocre work instead of building something exceptional. There is no work/life balance, you are expected to work at least 12 hours a day and be accessible 24/7. The technology is desperately outdated and they resist any progress with almost religious zeal. People are resigning at the alarming rates, and company frantically tries to hire just to keep up with resignations. In order to speed up hiring they resort to outright lies, deceit and dirty tricks. Make sure you carefully read what you sign at citadel (consult with a lawyer). Because of the high turnover no one in the company knows anything about the "system", you cant ask anyone anything because 1/3 of people you are working with were hired last year. The rest are completely discouraged from doing anything productive and actively looking to quit. No teamwork.

Manager was horrendously insecure and micro-managed everything in a field he had no business or experience to justify doing so (if micro-managing is ever justifiable). HR and manager's boss didn't seem to care that he was doing this - even after informing them he bought an expensive board without consulting his subordinates and it was effectively useless for what he wanted to do with it - something that could have been avoided if this guy had put his ego aside and asked the people working for him with more experience & knowledge. Company has a highly secretive culture - at least two people were hired into our group without my knowledge. Granted, I wasn't a manager myself, but I'm generally accustomed to being permitted to interview candidates I'm going to work with and at least make a recommendation. You're also not allowed to talk to ANYONE because of this whole "need to know" BS that permeates the whole place. If you're coming from the tech sector and are used to being allowed to talk to people in other groups to get an idea of what it is they want, forget about doing that here. The Insecure Micro-Manager is your gatekeeper here. He will dictate the specifications and how he wants you to build your design. He will not care about your feedback or warnings about his architecture because his ego is too big. Then 2 weeks after you make your delivery and move on to the next project, Micro-Manager will tell you that the requirements weren't defined right and you need to go back to the old project and fix it so the internal customers will be happy. Something that clearly could be avoided by just letting us interact directly with the internal customers rather than carry this whole "need to know" concept to the paranoid extreme that exists at Citadel. I'll say two more things that sums up the company culture here. About 6 months through my one-year stint at this place, there was a company-wide meeting where a friend of CEO Ken Griffin gave a talk about something. Following the presentation, there was a reception afterward. It dawned on me that I knew NOBODY there beyond my manager and colleagues at this reception. And if you held a gun to my head today and told me to name more than 6 or 7 people who work for Citadel (never mind titles or departments or anything), I'd end up with a hole in my head. Just stay away. This place is just not worth the trouble or the pay. Or dealing with Micro-Manager's ego.