Capital One

Great compensation, smart coworkers, good projects, etc.

In hindsight, I suppose the issues I encountered were similar to those that I read about before joining the company: get on the wrong side of the wrong person/people and you may find yourself without a job.

While I admit to having fumbled some deadlines on projects early in my stint with C1, I was put on a PIP & made a very sincere effort to improve my performance. Before being fired, my manager told me he had "seen my improvements," and that I wouldn't have been put on a PIP if I had performed so well earlier in the year.

It made me feel ill/uneasy hearing my manager say, "You're performing at 100%, but when you're on a PIP, we expect 150%... 200%." At that point, I knew there was no pleasing my manager; I had gotten on his bad side, and he didn't want me around.

Ultimately, if I had to retry working at C1, I would've tried to impress everyone immediately & do everything to be seen as a hungry go-getter in search of approval/accolades, rather than being a quiet engineer who kept to himself, trying to acclimate to the job/tech-stack in the background. There's no saving yourself once you've been singled out.

This was my first time in such a cut-throat corporate environment, and I didn't get hip to the culture until it was too late. My stress levels were very high throughout my tenure at C1, and I don't miss it.