Capital One

Good salaries, paid on time.

Despite the cons, C1 was able to hire a bunch of talented engineers. Some of the talented engineers were fired after speaking up. The project I was involved in basically depended on two to three talented engineers, while the other engineers slowed down the project with horrible decisions. Thankfully, time at the office wasn't tracked, and the less talented engineers somehow weren't at the office often, a great boost to productivity.

The teams are very autonomous. The team that worked on the same product as me for a different platform consisted of 100% contractors and finished over a year before the team I was on did, with a much better product. If my team was as productive as the other team, my ratings would be 4 or 5 stars. Make sure you join a team that's productive.

• Very politicized environment.
• Team managers (from an acquired startup) were not managing the team well and were promising not-so-talented engineers lead positions while firing the good engineers.
• Short-term focus.
• Communication with other C1 departments was discouraged by management, making projects way more challenging than needed.
• The team follows Scrum to the letter; they even had a dedicated (and certified, he told me) Scrum Master.