Capital One

Decent Pay Good Benefits Package Modern Tech Stack Very Talented Colleagues Decent Work Life Balance

Ruthless Performance Management

Highly Political

Under the Radar Redundancies

Tedious Software Development Processes

Constant Churn of Senior Leaders

Senior management use performance reviews as a weapon. Engineers who are unlucky enough to end up in a team working on something which isn't in the limelight are pitted against people working on the latest shiny new thing.

Over the years I've been here, I have seen many amazing engineers unfairly chewed up and spat out by this ruthless process. Never in any organisation have I seen so many people fail probation.

If you get a "below strong" in your review, you'll be put on a PIP straight away, missing out on a salary increase or, at worst, be offered a deal to leave quietly.

The salary and benefits are good. So, if you're lucky and land on a project the company cares about, then you might love it here as long as you play the feedback game. Otherwise, good luck!

Also, the organisation is so badly encumbered by processes that writing software and getting it deployed is very hard. This means that whilst Capital One UK were once a disruptor, now sadly, it's a slow-moving dinosaur.