I think the worst part about this company is how disingenuous it is. They are really good at paying lip service to important issues such as Diversity, Empathy, Transparency, Work/Life balance, but then try to find any evidence of progress within any of these areas (if you're truly data-driven, then this is a no-brainer), and you won't find any.
Diversity: They recruit from the same 4 schools in Canada, from the same 3 programs, which have the same type of students and people from similar backgrounds (McGill, Queens, UofT, Waterloo..). Where is your diversity? When asked about why we don't recruit from other schools, you'll get some bs answer that boils down to "we are biased and we like our bias so we won't change".
Empathy: The amount of associates who have left purely because of their manager's emotional incompetence is absurd. The managers here are promoted not for their ability to manage people, but for their ability to deliver "results", which means that if your whole team is burnt out and depressed, but your manager appears to have reached some goal (emphasis on APPEAR), then they will get promoted and you'll be left with nothing but emotional trauma.
What do they do about this? An optional 2 hour empathy training.
Transparency: If you directly ask senior leadership anything that isn't a set up for an ego stroke then you will get a vague, standard PR answer that is of no substance. "What are you doing about the absurdly high attrition?" "Why won't you pay us more?" "What is this business trying to do exactly? Other an exploit poor people".
Answer? "Great question! We are excited about the future of Capital One Canada! What you're asking is important to us, and we will continue to work hard on providing those answers :)"
WLB: Mixed bag, you may luck into a team that isn't doing anything, so you're free to spend the day on Reddit or applying to other jobs, or you may be absurdly busy. In any case, you will have way more meetings than you care for.
Other notable issues:
- They cannot retain top talent they have nothing to offer to anyone with skill and ambition. The pay isn't good, the work gets boring, the company is stagnant, the managers are bad
- Senior leadership loves to talk about themselves and what hobbies they have, etc. at every meeting.... Who told them this was a good idea?
- Leadership is extremely biased, but will constantly tell you how unbiased they try to be. Yet, if you don't think like them, you will not get far.
- Titles are inflated. When you eventually leave, if you go to a REAL tech company, your title will decrease, but you'll be paid minimum 30%-50% more. Capital One is obsessed with titles and hierarchy, so don't get too attached to that "senior" next to your role.
- Once you hit senior, you are not paid well if you are in a technical/analytical role.
- If you're an external hire coming into a senior role, you will not get promoted unless you completely conform to their way of doing things. Again, absurdly biased
- So many people who have never worked elsewhere saying how great it is comparatively....
- Our business model is literally charge poor people for being poor
