1. Never trust what your manager says at face value. Always send meeting notes after each meeting as they insist on having conference calls vs written documentation to play the 'he said, she said' game.
When there is a clear lie, they claim to have a 'miscommunication' and the employee might have 'misunderstood what his/her supervisor said'
2. Performance management - rating your employees against each other is creating a civil war to survive.
3. Personality, gender, race and position matters - if you are an introvert, female, not white and a position and/or team that are deemed as "non-essential", you will be first in the list to be discarded when there is a re-org.
4. It is basically a big high school run by "popular" people, Capital One is *huge* on politics. If you do not play that game, you are toast.
5. Your future and advancement in this company depends on your supervisor. If you are not his/her favorite, watch out.
6. More on performance review - there are no clear standards on what is expected of you in your role. It depends on which LOB you are in, the team you are part of and unknown expectations of the current VP of your department.
7. Perceptions are everything, actual results mean nothing. Your performance is measured based on reviews by your team members and colleagues. If somebody does not like you because they just don't or because you are doing your job and they do not like being called out, it is a red X in your credibility. Recovering from that is pretty much impossible.
8. Directors are too involved in the individual team dynamics. They use their authority to override roles, responsibilities and impose their wishes. You do what they ask for blindly or you will be in trouble, despite forcing you to go against the responsibilities of your role.
9. Lack of accountability in management for their decisions. If something goes wrong, they will blame someone else for the lack of results in order to avoid the blame and consequences.
10. Recognition for a job well done depends on what kind of project you are allocated to.
If it is a "we need to work on it to survive in the industry", forget about it. You will be taken for granted.
If it is "we are working on it to differentiate ourselves and break new grounds in the industry", you will be the star, no matter how well or bad the project is moving along.
11. 2-4 reorgs a year are clearly not needed as they create chaos. It takes months to recover from a reorg and then a new reorg is announced.
12. Employees can be treated like thieves when they are let go. There is no need to have a security guard shadow a good standing respectful employee when he/she is let go - while the employee cleans his/her desk, returns the laptop and badge and is walked out the door- No, it did not happen to me, I know what you are thinking ;)
Treat people with respect.
