Capital One reviews

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Richard D. Fairbank

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13K reviews
2.0
Sep 18, 2016

Middle management needs a lot of work!

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Competitive compensation (e.g. Benefits, base, signon bonus, RRSP matching, vacation days and personal days). - Flexible work from home options and depending on the team, good work life balance. - Office space is brightly lit and lot's of natural lighting. Plenty of meeting rooms and collaboration spaces. Now there are standing desks and Macbooks available. - A selection of foosball tables, ping pong table and TVs for watching games with coworkers. - Free goodies (e.g. Tea, coffee, occasionally food). - Plenty of committees to join (e.g. Fun Committee, Philanthropy Committee, Asian Committee). - Casual dress code. - Various Fun Days or company social events throughout the year. - Coworkers are generally intelligent and hardworking. Have met some really nice people and even made some friends. People are usually open to helping and connecting with you. - Senior leaders are friendly and relatively approachable (e.g all hands, office hours, walking around the office).

Cons

- Lot's of bullying in the office by middle management that are not addressed through HR policy or by senior management (e.g. coercion, pranks, humiliation, tolerance of inappropriate behaviour). - Rampant favoritism that is counter to its claims of meritocracy. Very obvious in-group and out-group dynamic. - 360 degree reviews are now gone so performance review is more of "he said she said" and whether you are on the good side of certain key players. - Managers don't know how to coach or develop. Just provides passive aggressive "advice" to keep you in check of your "development plan". - Everyone seems nice but will go behind your back to complain to your manager/others. No one really cares about your development like the company claims unless it helps he/she get promoted. - Overemphasis on the charming and extroverted personality as a factor to success. - Lack of focus and forward momentum in the strategic direction of the company. - Things are poorly documented and very poor training in general so good luck with your own onboarding! - Pressure to spend a lot of time, whether you like it or not, to "socialize" with your peers above and beyond what is reasonable for a professional relationship. - Better to keep your mouth shut about issues in the workplace because it will probably get back to you and you will be the one who gets penalized (this includes the many many "employee" surveys that you are asked to fill out).

2.0
May 6, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Good work life balance - Competitive compensation and benefits - Choice of Mac/Windows - Choice of company paid Iphone/Android - Excellent health insurance and RRSP

Cons

- Non technical managers. - Lots of pointless meetings. - Lots of dependencies on US Head Office Richmond. - Highly Political Environment. - Brutal Performance Management. Being Agile is just a slogan to recruit good people here, lots of paperwork, lots of restrictions. Management doesn't really understand software development. Lot of mismanagement in allocation of resources. You can survive here if you are not too ambitious about your career. Otherwise this place might hurt your software career in long run. Politics here are very ugly. Something you need to consider carefully before joining.

1.0
Nov 13, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Salary and benefits were very strong and exceed anything I had experienced elsewhere especially with regard the medical premiums which were fantastic.

Cons

The induction to the company speaks to the core values and competencies. The CEO of the company also reinforces these aspects. Yet sadly those messages and behaviors are completely lost once in the business, especially at the SVP level down, where I mainly interacted. It is a completely political environment no matter what the location, and I found more weak SVP's and VP's in COF than I have ever seen or would have believed. Owing to their weakness they live in the blame culture but do this in deceptive ways, i.e. make emotive statements of unhappiness, but have no evidence to back it up. However the damage is done as the other weak line management would react to the statement and not be strong enough to stand up and ask for proof. Hence most of the time is either fire fighting, or trying to politically CYA or deflect these statements without substance. Trouble is it is endemic within their organization and will take a significant clear out to change things. I tired of incorrect statements constantly being made to me of my staff and any attempt to not act in the way the rest of the company, i.e. demand proof, is met with accusations that you are not a team player and didn't I know that if an SVP expressed their concern at person X, they didn't need proof, their comment was more than enough.... Serious. Coupled with this, sadly their promotion system is so convoluted and without credibility is is actually causing great people to leave, rather than retaining the talent. They run a system know as cross calibration, where all line managers from a team sit together and discuss every member of staff and rank them accordingly. Trouble is how do you compare a lawyer with a financier? Much less if I want my team members to be ranked at X then I need to argue down all of my peers until I 'get my way'. A horribly amateurish and unprofessional way to determine pay raises, bonus and promotions, which in themselves take at least 12 months to achieve from an exceptional rating. Needless to say many many great people got fed up of this and would leave, meaning the attrition rate was shamefully high and the loss was of the top caliber people. Needless to say after 18 months I found an alternative role outside of the company in a culture much more respectful and transparent.

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