I did a job interview at Citibank a number of years ago, for an IT security position, and the thing I remember most was walking through the office and seeing a well used copy of Computer Security For Dummies on every desk. That reminded me of a past position at Chase where our group’s head of IT security was a former bricklayer, with no technical background, who was never without his copy of Computer Security for Dummies, and was forever trying to find out where we were “hiding our NFS”. We always tried to tell him that we didn’t use NFS and he would always counter that he didn’t buy it, and he knew we had one and that we were hiding it from him. Ok.

Chase and Citigroup are like the McDonalds of financial services, everyone works there once, the talented people leave, the ones who stay generally lack the confidence or ability to do likewise, and they are a PITA to work for because they live in constant fear of being out shown. I really wouldn’t recommend working at any of the big banks, they are thankless soul crushing jobs, and you’ll forever be working on what everyone else was doing ten years ago.