Short-staffed with back-to-back calls (feels like a call center), skills learned do not qualify you for other positions - Service Desk Engineer Capital One Employee Review

Since the pandemic stated in 2020, call queues have been a complete disaster. Most days it takes hours for users to get a hold of an IT Service Desk agent. I'm talking 100-200+ calls in the queue, with no end in sight for the agents who handle this for 8 hours every day. Between each call, there are only 45 seconds before another call comes in, which quickly leads to mental exhaustion after talking for 8 hours straight. This has been an issue for pretty much 2 years now!....2 years! To have it happen for a couple of months, fine, but any longer than that and you really can see where this item is on upper managements priority list/recognition of the dire reality of the situation. I understand it's a tough issue that's multi-facted, but 2 years is completely unacceptable in terms of the mental effects it has had on current employees. Pay increases every 6 month period are usually a miniscule 1.5-3%, which as everyone knows, does not keep up with inflation (especially the 6% inflation in 2021). You can most likely get paid more by working for a fully-remote friendly company based in another high COL state, especially for a role such as this one that should already be fully-remote since it's completely over the phone. Morale is at an all-time low with most team members I speak with, people are just burned out and dread going to work in the morning, which is quite sad. Life is too short to be feeling this way, and to see it at a company like Capital One is very disappointing. My biggest gripe is by far the lack of growth opportunities here in this particular position. Now, I want to preface this by saying yes some users have moved out of this position into other departments. For the overwhelming majority of agents however, this has not been the case. The users who did move into other positions usually had a lucky break with knowing the right person at the right time, or having experience that was gained outside of Capital One and thus could make them a stronger candidate. For those whos first IT experience was here however, even with earning certifications, it's very hard to move out of this department into other IT positions within the company. Part of the reason for this is that Capital One has a job hierarchy that restricts users from applying for other job positions unless you are currently at a certain job level. For instance, if you are Sr. Coordinator (which is what this role starts at), you cannot be considered for a role that's 2 levels above your current level due to HR policy. The company recently made it so you could apply for 1 job level above your current level, which is an improvement in terms of upward mobility for people. However, the kicker is most tech roles within the company start at Senior Associate or above, which compared to the Sr. Coordinator level, is 3 levels above that. The levels break down like this: Sr. Coodinator Prin. Coordinator Associate Senior Associate So with this hierarchical system in place, you are destined to be in the IT Service Desk position for a long time, which I believe is by design to keep people in the position. Promotions can take anywhere from 1-3 years, and there's no guarantee when it's going to happen for you as it takes longer with each promotion. Upon getting a promotion, you do not learn any additional skills that you didn't already know at your previous level for the most part. The job responsibilities stay the same, and thus so do your skills and employability for other positions within and outside the company. Generally, industry-wide it's often recommended to stay in Helpdesk/Service Desk no longer than a year or two so you can specialize in other areas (unless you really enjoy it). The other areas are things like System Administration, Cloud/Networking, Security, Data, etc. The problem is, you do not gain the necessary skills within this position to move into those particular areas within the company, and are left to get certifications or outside education to fill this gap. This isn't an issue unique to Capital One, but the problem is a lot of internal company positions will want at least a year or two of experience with the technologies themselves in an actual job position. Not having this experience, but having certifications and outside education will look good, and may even provide an opportunity for a lucky break as I mentioned some people above had, but overall when applying for other positions you will get denied for not having the direct job experience a lot of times. Outside the company, your predicament is just as bad as even if you do have certs/education, the position itself does not give you access to skills that can get you more than another help-desk job unless you get lucky with a company willing to view your certs/homelab as experience. You don't get your hands on managing users/groups in Active Directory, group policy configuration, Windows Server, automation/scripting, AWS/Azure, or SQL. When you look outside the company, you'll see and realize how a lot of even other Help Desk positions within large companies require these skills.