Like being at a consulting firm, but with better hours
Pros
-Up-to-date MacBook Pro and iPhone with hotspot (you can upgrade every two years) -Decent hours if you’re not a people leader -Good 401k match with some immediate vesting, cheap health insurance and some FSA matching $ -Coworkers are competent -Friends/family think you have a prestigious employer (unless they are in true Silicon Valley-level tech or are far-left and think credit cards prey on the poor and uneducated) -Gift card points handed out like candy -Monthly “no meetings” days -Founder/CEO explains his strategy in detail every year -Pays well for Plano, Chicago, and Richmond -Good on-site amenities before COVID -Meetings have 5-10 minute breaks in between -You get a couple extra national holidays since it is a bank. People are dismissed after lunch on Fridays heading into 3-day weekends
Cons
-Every employee is stack-ranked, with ~5-10% of people getting punished with half bonuses, half raises, and being put on a PIP (fast track to being let go) each year. HR glides over all this when you join, but the fear of this by itself changes a lot of behaviors and internal politics. For example, everyone is obsessed with working on projects that look good when reported to higher-ups, sometimes at the cost of doing what they think really should be done. Perception is everything at Capital One, even if it is not the only place like this in the job market -Only two weeks’ vacation when you join (and it gets prorated) -No stock grants in most cases unless you’re a director+, very unusual for a self-proclaimed tech company -The salaries look high at each title, but there’s down-leveling and title deflation, so set your expectations conservatively. At an IC level, you are told you could get promoted at any time to encourage you to work harder for free (they will not remind you there’s a cap on promotions each cycle until you don’t get the promotion) -No more Excel, everyone uses Google Sheets now -Personal email is blocked on work computers, and you’ll be doing two-factor authentication at least half a dozen times a day -Contractors and fresh college grads constantly joining and leaving teams, requiring a lot of training, explaining, and finding replacements. These less efficient newbies are often paid close to what much more experienced/FT hires make -A culture of forced optimism (even printed on shirts and mugs) where instead of saying there’s a problem or a weakness, everyone says you have an “opportunity” 😀 -Pay is not competitive in NY or SF -Constant mandatory training courses (the acronym is CBT, and the joke writes itself if you look it up) and reminders from your VP that your department looks bad if anyone is late completing the courses -Extremely hierarchical culture — be prepared to be discouraged from initiating a 1:1 meeting with anyone more than a bit higher than you in title/scope -You cannot work remotely from anywhere outside the US even during COVID (most places will only ban a few countries) -Before COVID working from home was heavily discouraged though office crowding was an issue