Capital One

Great work/life balance. I get in at 10 a.m. and leave by 5 p.m. every day. If I come in at 9 a.m. for some reason, I'd usually be the first person in the office.

Not stressful; deadlines are flexible.

Pay is good, if not particularly high.

C1 in SF is a great place to park yourself and make a steady income without having to really care about what you're doing. In fact, caring is a detriment. Just do what you're told and you'll be fine.

It's not a tech company; it's a bank. Computers and the network are locked down, making it difficult to be productive. I waste more time fighting IT than I waste in meetings! I've worked at other big enterprises in the past; C1 is by far the worst.

Boring busywork. Why are we doing any of this again? My team built something that literally made the website significantly slower in order to enable features that no one used. I tried to discuss this, but it was made clear to me that was outside of my role and I should just focus on the tasks I was assigned.

You definitely feel the fact that this is a satellite office (I'm in San Francisco). We are many layers removed from actual decision-makers and hear anything important via rampant rumors before anyone in management tells us what's going on. On that note, there are plenty of reorgs, shuffling priorities, and elimination of budget. Even with a strong performance review, I got pushed from a team I liked to a team I hate because the budget for the team was slashed by 70%.

The stack-ranking system seems to be universally hated by managers and ICs, and even the directors I've talked with. It's pretty brutal.