Capital One Reviews

Cons

Not that many it was chill

Cons

I've got to be honest, working at Capital One has been a mixed bag. On one hand, the mission to change banking for good caught my attention and got me excited. On the other, the reality of their stack ranking system has been a tough pill to swallow. Even when you're doing everything right—meeting deadlines, delivering quality work—it feels like it doesn't matter unless you're in favor with the ranking system and your managers favorite. What really gets to me is seeing how everyone can be working hard to bring the bank forward, that would make their performance review “strong” but because of this system, some associates are still forced to the bottom or hit with a PIP. I’ve seen this not just in one part of the bank but I’ve experienced this in retail and commercial bank, and this has been happening more on commercial as attrition is at an all time high, managers play favorites and show little support to their team. It's disheartening, especially knowing that big names like Google, Microsoft, and GE have already moved past such outdated practices. The constant manager turnover doesn't help, making it feel like you're always trying to prove yourself all over again. It's a lot, and it contradicts the whole "changing banking for good" message. We really need to rethink this approach. If we're serious about making a difference in banking, it should start with how we're treated and evaluated. It's about time we supported the people putting in the work day in and day out.

Cons

Astonishingly bad talent management, often putting people into roles that they are not qualified for such as placing non technical people in technical roles Unpredictable performance levels that often have little to do with actual performance The misuse of talent tied to the bizarre performance ranking system combine to force top talent into situations where they cannot succeed and are penalized financially and in their career progression Once someone is caught in this position and get a negative review, they are not able to rotate out until they do succeed, which traps employees in a rigid no-win situation when a new assignment would resolve the issue All of the above combine into a method of putting employees onto a PIP and then laying them off without saying that it is a layoff, adding in legalese that puts the onus on the employee for choosing not to take reasonable steps to improve using the PIP The PIP is treated as an acknowledgement of poor performance and a choice not to improve rather than what it is, an opportunity to get severance and escape a bad situation

Cons

The whole RTO process is stupid. They don't care anymore for the work you do, they care about you coming in for x amount of hours. You can literally sit and do nothing for 2 days a week, be lazy and watch YouTube, and Capital One will be happy that you're in the office. The performance review ladder is garbage, there's literally no room for growth. The bar keeps getting raised every year, and it's gotten to the point of doing an insane amount of work, and then your leaders saying "That's great, but you can do more" - I literally don't have the capacity to sell my soul. I used to recommend this place for friends to work at, but after 2023, not anymore.

Cons

Here is the reality of being a machine learning engineer at C1, despite all the social media marketing: you are rebuilding a tool that readily exists in commercial and open-source projects, which no one else uses within the company, except the MLEs who are building it, in order to justify continuing to build it. At the end of the day, you are reproducing an overengineered solution, which is also (in-part) intended to remove the need for your role (and data scientists). Modeling experience is largely non-existent since your time is best spent reinventing the wheel, Furthermore, you are also going to end up in effectively the only MLE org within the company, which also has one of the worst happiness and management cultures within all of Capital One. Prepare to spend everyday working with mostly arrogant and unpleasant (to put it mildly) managers, who lack tech experience in many instances, while privately commiserating with coworkers in Slack. If you have experience elsewhere, you will be amazed to see such joyless teams.

Cons

They say they are doing remote in various positions, but I’ve heard horror stories from more than a few people. Getting hired remote, but it’s not written in their contract, so they get mandated to visit the office anyways. Or people who have guarantees from managers but HR doesn’t agree years later. Also, they are trying to say they aren’t doing layoffs, when in reality they are doing everything but to copy Silicon Valley for the shareholders. There have been mass layoffs of anyone who got below a certain threshold of reviews as “fired for the employees poor performance”. I think the remote debacles are on a similar note as well.

Cons

- The adjustment to Hybrid was been tricky with some employees seeming to get more leeway for their own situations compared to other employees. Enforcement and flexibility should be offered more fairly to all employees - The ADP program is amazing but experienced hires are definitely an afterthought with little to no onboarding. At times I've felt there was some bias against me as an non-ADP because I wasn't trained the "capital one way" yet and was often treated as a 2nd/3rd choice to projects and opportunities.

Cons

Capital One practices stack ranking. This was somewhat relaxed during the pandemic, but the low performance bucket was as high as 15-20% at 2023 mid year. They seem to have historically used this as a mechanism to lay people off without having the negative press that accompanies it. Read other reviews to get a sense of what kind of behavior this incentivizes and what sort of culture it creates. If you join as a new employee you will be at a disadvantage compared to those who have been there for a while/have connections within their organization. Even if it does not immediately worry you, I have seen driven, talented engineers driven out of the company because eventually someone in their upper management disliked them. There's definitely a fake nice culture, people will be friendly but knives come out behind closed doors during performance calibrations. A big source of the company's revenue (credit card interest) comes from people trapping themselves in debt. It doesn't feel great to contribute to that.

Cons

- Fast paced. If you are used to a government-like pace, this is probably not the place for you - As with all companies this size, politics can get in the way of getting work done from time to time - Bell curve performance management

Cons

Focus on stack ranking has turned this company into a PIP factory. The company forces a distribution of 10-15% of people being put into the "below expectations" bucket every 6 months and these people get put into a PIP. It makes you resent your high performing peers because their success means you are 1 step closer to being put in the below expectations bucket. They are trying to be like amazon with half the pay. I read the same negative reviews before I joined and chose to ignore them thinking that only disgruntled people would be writing them but they turned out to be 100% accurate. Do yourself a favor and avoid C1.