Capital One reviews

You already know what it is - the dang performance management. Twice a year and takes months on end from start to finish, so you basically feel like you are actively on the chopping block 50% of the year. Leadership tries to act like it's transparent and equitable - it's just not and never will be. What if your entire team is made of strong performers and you're all absolutely crushing it? Too bad, 10-15% will still be offered up to the chopping block. They think this is a way to crack the whip and get rid of low performers fast, but in reality, it causes morale issues and anxiety at every performance level. I am a high performer and I am anxious every day, even though I get overwhelming positive feedback, because I am worried I am never doing enough. Doesn't help that there are also somehow people at this company who are toxic, terrible people managers, or useless barnacles who haven't done anything in ages, and still manage to cling on because of politics or optics. If you want to follow the Amazon playbook, then pay Amazon level salaries and have an Amazon brand name. If you can't do that, then ease up off our necks.

In hindsight, I suppose the issues I encountered were similar to those that I read about before joining the company: get on the wrong side of the wrong person/people and you may find yourself without a job. While I admit to having fumbled some deadlines on projects early in my stint with C1, I was put on a PIP & made very sincere effort to improve my performance. Before being fired, my manager told me he had "seen my improvements," and that I wouldn't have been put on a PIP if I had performed so well earlier in the year. It made me feel ill/uneasy hearing my manager say "you're performing at 100%, but when you're on a PIP, we expect 150%... 200%." At that point, I knew there was no pleasing my manager - I had gotten on the bad side of him, and he didn't want me around. Ultimately, if I had to retry working at C1, I would've tried to impress everyone immediately & do everything to be seen as a hungry go-getter in search of approval/accolades, rather than being a quiet engineer who kept to himself, trying to acclimate to the job/tech-stack in the background. There's no saving yourself once you've been singled out. This was my first time in such a cut-throat corporate environment, and I didn't get hip to the culture until it was too late. My stress levels were very high throughout my tenure at C1, and I don't miss it.