Capital One

Thought pay was good at first. There's a treehouse, too, but it's in a blind spot as far as wireless goes.

Where to begin? I'll break it down into a list to be kind to you. I was hired as a front-end developer.

• Necessary equipment to perform the job took 3.5 months to receive. Should have received half of the equipment sooner but got caught in an IT circle for no reason. They seemingly approve equipment requests based on how they are feeling.

• Necessary permissions/administrative rights took longer than the equipment to arrive. By the time I finally got a decent work machine and was no longer a glorified google-query runner, I was dismayed to discover that I couldn't change my wireless preferences, access/use the command line, etc.

• While I was waiting for my equipment, I was given a laptop with Windows XP, IE 7, and Outlook. During this period my team was confused as to why I couldn't do my job. Explaining that IE 7 and notepad do not a useful development environment make was frustrating and tiring. Oh, I had Eclipse. I forgot about that. I don't use Eclipse because I don't need an IDE, so I wasn't too happy, but tried using it - didn't have access to any of the repositories to actually work on anything. Awesome.

• I couldn't go anywhere on the internet: Github, Stack Overflow, Gmail, Grooveshark, Twitter, random sites hosted by developers that offered valuable documentation, etc. This especially sucked because the campus was out in the middle of nowhere and my phone didn't have service. I couldn't talk to family or friends.

• Team managers dropped the ball constantly, and people were quitting left and right. We went through three project managers in my short stint there. Managers promised to handle issues and then never responded to email.

• I wasn't allowed to leave the team room. The campus was huge and had great pockets of private space for me to really get into a groove with my work, but every time I did, my team either gave me the silent treatment, notified a manager, or complained about it in end-of-sprint meetings. When they complained, they insisted on saying 'people keep leaving the team room and I need to talk to them' even though I was the only one who left to find private space. They weren't comfortable using IM. When I was in the room, they rarely spoke to me. It was a little confusing. When I was spoken to and asked for help, it usually meant pair-programming with a Java developer to help write CSS.

• The noise in the team rooms. Constant meetings, conference calls, etc. Cramped space. Felt a lot like prison, since I couldn't leave without arousing the anger of my team - despite not being able to really do all that much for them.

• Meetings. All. The. Time. I would come in early just to work before everyone came in - meetings began at 9 and went to 12. Might get 15-30 minutes in between. After lunch, it was usually more meetings. You might get 1-2 hours of actual code time. Don't forget about the multi-day meeting sprints, either. 3-4 day long meetings. All day.

• Javascript needed to be approved in order to be used. Have a modal you want to use? You have to send it off for approval before you can use it. No one knows who has to approve it, but they know it has to be approved. Could take anywhere from 1-3 weeks.

• Pair-programming mandate. Want to program? You have to do it with another programmer - all the time. No exceptions. Doesn't matter if you're a Ruby guy and have to shoulder a Java guy. That's all part of the experience.

• Passive-aggressive notes left on workspaces.

• Intranet applications made for collaborating/issue tracking/etc. are buggy, bloated, useless piles of crap. They also only worked well in IE 6/7 - go figure.

• All work needed to be tested on multiple Android/Windows devices, iPhones, iPads, etc. There was one person with the key to the cabinet that had all of the testing devices and in order to get one you had to go through another process. That guy not in the office? Chances are, you won't be doing any device testing.

Bottom line - if you want to lose the ability to do your work well, get paid to take naps, watch a bunch of intelligent people bicker with each other over who knows best, and submit a bunch of bad IT requests, this is the place for you. Oh, it's also no secret that it sucks to work at Capital One - there were lots of meetings about that.

Pay receives a neutral rating because after experiencing the experience that is Capital One, I feel like it should have been three to four times what I was receiving.

Fire everyone, scrap everything, and start over.