Capital One Reviews

Pros

Very friendly people, very relaxed on PTO

Cons

Large company with some politics

Pros

work life balance, solid benefits, nice offices

Cons

moves slow - if you're looking to move fast that's a con

Pros

It's easier to stand out now performance-wise. Decent to good culture around PTO and WLB. Solidly built technology platform infrastructure Availability to work with your favorite technologies Great direct management experience. Solid communication there.

Cons

Weaker economic moat despite rising interest rates due to tech acceleration at other banks. Useless acquisition of Velocity Black, arrow pointing down. Corporate hierarchy runs too deep. Direct managers are good but the suits are flailing and useless. They have very little finger on the pulse of the changing world and are receding into a lack of employee trust due to tougher economic conditions. Awful decision-making around forced RTO, sold to employees in the most patronizing and unconvincing way possible. They're phrasing it as not enough people took the "opportunity" to come in, because for half of us there is no point and we do not now and have never physically worked with our teammates, which are halfway across the country. So now I go into an office with nobody I know, you messed up my taxes and still haven't resolved it, and expect me to be grateful that I can what, get free coffee and make new friends or something? This is infantilizing. I am a professional and I get stuff done.

Pros

The pay I guess was fine

Cons

They preach DIB, yet when I was facing issues as a nonbinary person such as being misgendered by coworkers, the solutions offered were inadequate. They essentially offered for people who weren't nonbinary to explain my pronouns for me. No thank you. Not to mention I fought for years for gender free bathrooms only to get 1 in a campus of 12+ buildings that are constantly being remodeled. Far from adequate. When I became depressed and was having a difficult time because of it at work, their offerings were again inadequate. They offered time off, aka time to think which is something I didn't need, and online counseling resources even though I already am in regular therapy and psychiatry appointments. In short, their "help" offered was insulting. Finally, I was promised on several occasions that I would not go back into the office only to be told later that I had to go in and was unlikely to get an exception even though the mere thought of going in was causing me panic attacks. Live outside of a 50 mile radius from the office? Fine. Severe mental illness considered disabilities causing you to dread going in to the office? Too bad. It was incredibly hurtful after almost 8 years of working for them to be told to essentially get over my PTSD/anxiety/depression and suck it up or be fired for failing to come in to the office.

Pros

Decent pay, some good colleagues, WLB if you are not Senior Business Analyst.

Cons

You hear "Do the right thing" a lot, but some people feel very comfortable about lying and getting away with it especially, if their rank is higher. Also, the senior manager and director positions should at least have basic knowledge of the tools Senior Business Analysts use, otherwise they have no idea about how long some tasks would take and also it makes extremely hard to explain certain issues related to data and tools. Finally, stacked ranking system gives unbalanced power to managers, which led some of them to do nothing and pass all of their responsibility to "their" Senior Business Analyst in some cases. Also, inappropriate attitude such as yelling for trivial matters and creating problems out of nowhere should be more closely monitored, Even if it may not pass as an harassment, it creates a disrespectful work environment.

Pros

401k/FSA matching, sponsored certifications, competitive wages, diversity/ inclusion/belonging

Cons

Inconsistent messaging from CEO and Senior Leaders. Forced and unnecessary return to office. Unreasonable performance review requirements. Some people leaders have terrible people leader skills (but great business skills). Work/life balance in lower leadership roles is a smoke and mirrors, working up to 60+ hours a week, this is exploitation of salaried employees.

Pros

They do not micromanage, awesome coworkers, virtual work

Cons

They were very work life balance oriented and virtual. Now company is pushing 50% in office and that is hurting lots of employees. Dropped with no regard to what this will do to employees home life. Job has no reason to be in office other than making friendship bracelets and playing patty cake. Half the team is out of state. Now have to commute 4 hours a day and miss time with kids. Will also hurt work.

Pros

You can learn a lot if you really put effort in. The culture of Capital One is great if you are a top performer. Great office Great work life balance

Cons

If you get put on a development plan say bye to your job. Very autonomous, don’t expect help on learning anything. They put the bottom 15-20% of employees on a PIP. Does not matter if you are doing excellent, it’s based on a tier system. So if you join a group of say 100 folks, and everyone is a great performer. The bottom 15-20 people amongst the team will all get put on a PIP. This is why they are always hiring

Pros

The benefits and time off are great but good luck using them.

Cons

Employees are constantly overworked. Bad managers across the enterprise. You’re lucky if you find a good one. They would rather hire useless managers than more folks to actually do the work. We’re always short staffed and given more work than could possibly get done in a 40 hour work week. The only pro was still working from home after 3 years, but now that’s changed. We’re now expected to go back into the office 3 days per week after being given only a month’s notice. This change will be a pay cut for most of us with the rise of inflation and now adding commuting cost. Our little 4% annual increases hardly help. Work/life balance is now gone and they’ve made it clear they will be checking badge swipes. We will lose more people but the work will stay the same. Those left will suffer. Avoid this company at all costs.

Pros

Continuous performance and career management - performance reviews on a 6-month cadence and career trajectory discussions in-between. Engineers can choose between People Leader and Individual Contributor tracks so they don't have to become a people leader to progress. Regular raises that accompany performance reviews above. Generous 401k matching - 3% automatic company contribution, 100% match for first 3% of your contribution, 50% match for next 3%. In total, 6% to get 7.5%. Health insurance options from Anthem with decent company premium contribution and $500/yr HSA/FSA employer contribution (+$500 for spouse on plan). Paid AWS certification (required for tech associates) and other training. Engineers have monthly "Invest in Yourself" days dedicated to training, not work. Stock purchase plan - Put up to 15% of each paycheck towards buying Capital One stock at a 15% discount. Immediately vests so you can either hold onto it for dividends or sell immediately to essentially boost your pay by 2.25%. Culture is great from top-down. CEO Rich Fairbank has a yearly all-associate "state of the union" that is very genuine, sincere, and informative. Regular fun team-building exercises, including cocktail- and dessert-making. Generous recognition "spot rewards" system that can be redeemed for some pretty cool, relevant, and useful rewards. Swag. So much swag.

Cons

New hybrid model, if you are <50 miles from an office you may be expected to come in at least sometimes. It's really a team-by-team basis, I'm full remote and would actually enjoy occasionally coming into an office again, but I know some people would consider this a con. Regular training around lots of compliance aspects of working in a fintech. Not the end of the world but it's definitely more than at other non-financial institutions.