Capital One

My perspectives as a software engineer working for Capital One:

• Use very good and modern software stacks. Whatever the latest AWS has, Capital One has it. Capital One is one of the top customers of AWS, so AWS always tries to sell the latest and greatest whatever they have to Capital One. You can rest assured that you are on top of cloud technology when working for this company.

• They have one of the best security practices of any companies I have ever seen. They were hacked in the past and are severely scared of ever being hacked again.

Their performance review is a variation of "stack ranking", Jack Welch style (look it up).

Performance is done every 6 months, and they usually let go around 10-15% of a team/group per year through this method.

Attrition is astronomical, even within the company (there are a lot of job changes within the engineering organizations).

I have seen directors (both engineering and products) being let go through this process. Even managers will jump when they sense they or their groups are in peril. I myself had 5 different managers in less than 2 years.

Ask yourself if you want to work for a job where your own manager is not looking out for you and will jump at any opportunities.

There are no quarterly or half-year planning or OKRs whatsoever, just a weird PowerPoint presentation of what you did in the half-year, and they stack rank you against your peers.

If you are the quiet type, you will be on the chopping block sooner or later.

Oh, did I say they copy Amazon a lot?

They are a big customer of Amazon. They are hiring managers/directors from Amazon, and these Amazon people bring the same culture to Capital One, and I'm not sure if I like this.

Do proper quarterly, half-year, and full-year planning with your subordinates. Do not force your employees to go through terrible PowerPoint presentations about themselves.