Capital One Reviews

Pros

Good company. They really try to do the right thing for both customers and employees. Most managers are flexible and do what they can to help. Pay is pretty good and benefits are decent as well. 401k match is great, ESPP is also great.

Cons

Performance management is on a curve. Your rating may not match your performance expectation in order to fit a distribution. Managers do not have as much discretion as it appears. Also, expect your leadership to change a LOT. I've had 7 direct managers in 10 years and about a dozen dotted line managers. Priorities shift a few times per year. Because of the frequent changing, any goals that your group has set will likely be irrelevant within a few months. Most teams are on-call. Work/life balance can be difficult depending on the team and system(s) supported.

Pros

Fast paced, environment, but great place to work. Very good to it's employees with initiatives such as diversity and inclusion and culture/value, etc. Has been an absolute dream place to work during the pandemic! Only place that I know of that gave us lower level employees a $5 raise/hour for the first few months! Wish we would've been able to stay at that pay rate! :o) Awesome work-life balance benefits.

Cons

Departmental changes happen very often. Just when you start learning your role well, your role may change and you have to learn all over again. Difficult to move up if you come in on the ground level. Project based work and other opportunities to showcase your other talents/skills (other than what you were hired to do) are rare if you come in on the ground floor.

Pros

Amazing benefits (401k match, employee stock purchase plan w/partial matching, good medical/vision/dental, EAP, disability, FSA w/partial matching). People are generally nice and hard-working (read: very few a-holes or do-nothings).

Cons

This is a "culture first" place. Granted, the culture, on its face, sounds fantastic. Unfortunately, it's a veneer. If you dig at all, you'll find that employees aren't as valued as they tell you. Performance management is awful; it is 100% a popularity contest and getting promoted is next to impossible (5-year average). Come in at manager-level or above. DO NOT GET A JOB AS AN ASSOCIATE; YOU WILL STAY AN ASSOCIATE UNTIL YOU JUMP COMPANIES.

Pros

Incredibly stable place to work, things just hum along. Contribute to your projects and enjoy a good work life balance when you do so. Good pay for the area. Fairly modern stack, really just leans on AWS for the most part

Cons

We keep trying to internally build tools internally that AWS offers (or maybe they offer 6 months after we start work), that are poorly documented and honestly just don't work as well. We are a bank so there are definitely important places to pump the breaks and optimize for security and stability, but sometimes I think we build stuff in places that aren't in the interest of either of those things.

Pros

The pay was decent, but could've been better for all the work they pile up on you non-stop

Cons

Like a unorganized school, higher-ups unprofessional and everyone else confused. It's plum ridiculous to tell you the truth. Your boss teach you nothing because most the time they hire outsiders to come in and they don't know anything. Then the workers get fired behind it because the boss lies on the workers to cover they own tails of not knowing the job. Of course put the people under you on the chopping block, smh... SAD... THEN ... NO UNEMPLOYMENT BEHIND LIES AND WORKING MAKING THEM MONEY FOR 5 YEARS JUST TO END UP HOMELESS BEHIND LIES LIES AND MORE LIES

Pros

Flexible schedule and good benefits

Cons

Many teams and departments have no idea how to identify talent and retain it. Developers are hired with no actual vetting of their skills, to the point you wonder if they have ever written software before. The appearance of results is more important than actual results, so a lot of people move up through the ranks simply knowing how to sound like they know what they are doing regardless of actual ability. Many managers and team leads are poor at mentoring or coaching their hires, giving them unrealistic tasks with no guidance and expecting other teams to provide support and problem solving. Senior company leadership is completely out of touch of what actually goes on, only hearing about issues after they have been filtered through multiple levels of management.

Pros

AWS! A true modern bank! Culture embraces change and innovation - very unusual for a financial institution of its size. Work-life balance is great, as are benefits.

Cons

Lots of "Capital One lifers", who joined the company in its growth years, and seem to have been promoted because they were the most most senior (only) person in their job function. This leads to a mid-senior level group of individuals that lack external industry experience and are often mediocre talents that are somewhat stuck at Capital One because nobody else will compensate them for their unexciting skillset. This can cap high-potential individuals as they get stuck under an immediate manager that is neither moving up nor moving on.