It’s not evil for Citi to hand out bonuses
Quickly, as I have a call in a few:
- On Morning Joe this morning, the yokels who run that show were kvetching about additional bonuses given to top performers instead of the President’s Award annual trip to a sunny locale
- To yokel-paraphrase, “Why reward the top performers? Where are they going to go? Lehman?”
- Implicit assumption: people who work at banks are only qualified to work at banks.
- Every single star performer I met during my time working at or with Citi went on to work for a company not equal to a bank
- If you let your top talent go elsewhere, do you think that will increase or decrease your chances of getting out of a troubling situation? Do you think that top performers or the average-of-the-average are more likely to be able to put government dollars to good use?
Of course, I’ll also note that none of the top performers in my mind were ever invited to the President’s Award trip to a sunny locale. There was one woman who I liked and didn’t entirely suck who went, but on the flip side, one of the most perplexingly mediocre people with whom I’ve ever worked was also invited.
Look, the organizational culture at Citi is already one that encourages yes’m'ing and discourages declarations that the shivering, nude emperor is, in fact, naked as a jaybird. Frankly, I wish they’d flown the top peeps to that sunny locale instead of handing out loot. At least in warm weather it’s not so wacky to be tromping around in the buff. Maybe in that pants-optional environment, someone would feel more comfortable stating the obvious.
