Capital One

• Pay and benefits are good. The 401k is one of the best around.
• Smart and talented coworkers.
• Free snacks and coffee.
• Opportunity to work on some really cool AWS cloud projects.
• Lots of holidays and PTO.

Capital One is very hierarchical and has a culture of management and meetings. As a developer, I've had four managers in my two years here. I've had quite a few engineering jobs, and this was by far the worst-managed tech culture I've ever seen. There are lots of managers who can't deal with challenge and would rather remove the people with big ideas and replace them with sycophants.

This opportunity is best for managers and junior developers because they give juniors tasks that are way above their experience level, much to the frustration of senior engineers. They are having problems keeping senior developers around because promotions are very hard to come by, and the opinions of senior talent are not respected. Chest-puffing is more valued than actual work.

Ultimately, you have to enjoy working in a corporate environment. By that, I mean you have to know when to open and close your mouth and know what words to say. If you are competent and can play the political game, you will do very well here. If you are here to actually care about your work, then I would look elsewhere.

Get rid of the paper tigers. You know who you are.

If you took half the time to actually learn how to do your job effectively versus playing politics, this would be an amazing place to work.