, dahat wrote

Dare I say it... this isn't overly surprising to me...

Citibank (like a number of financial institutions) have a major presence in South Dakota (for tax reasons)... and back in college they were one of those who did major recruiting at my school. When interviewing with the folks there, I always got the impression that they were more about building just enough to get a job done, rather than getting it right... and this would seem to be an external sign of the same kind of BS I heard from folks working within.

To take a step back: My college had two major programming majors, Computer Science and Computer Information Systems... the joke at times was that CIS people built apps, while CS people built the tools to build the apps.

It's a similar story at my uni. All the people who have a good aptitude for CS things: the passionate and visionaries, are all starting forming their own start-ups, joining other startups, or going for the few games development companies in the region (like Rare). Everyone else got snared by the banks during their milk-rounds. My school offers a pure CS course but also a split-degree with the Business school, so you can imagine what those types are like.

When the banks and other financial institutions came round, the jist I got from the speakers was that graduates and juniors are there for a couple of years before they leave for somewhere else; this tells me there isn't much room for career-advancement and leaves perverse incentives, which might possibly explain how this little snafu with Citi came about.