Capital One

Great benefits. Most locations have a beautiful campus. Fantastic subsidized cafeterias with amazing food. Some very talented people (who will leave).

Your experience will vary greatly based upon which part of the company you work for, and then even more so by your leadership team.

The company repeats ad nauseam that it is "a tech company that just happens to operate in the financial services space" -- saying it does not make it so. I've worked for many companies in my career; this is more like a Soviet-era, government-owned manufacturing company than anything else.

Organizationally, it is highly fragmented and lacks both vision and leadership. The various LOBs are so very siloed and driven by their own goals and politics that serve the sole purpose of getting leaders fat bonuses, that it is nearly impossible to get anything meaningful done. Unless it is a Cyber remediation activity, then all of a sudden everyone is aligned -- and that's what it takes to get alignment.

The vetting/hiring process for Directors and above is:

• Do you have a friend here?
• Do you have a pulse? This means that the excruciatingly painful and laborious hoops of tests and interviews through which Senior Managers and below must go are not equally applied. As such, you will undoubtedly encounter some absolutely terrible people in senior leadership roles that have no business being in such positions of authority.

Despite what the Capital One PR machine claims, it is ridiculously far from being an Agile organization. Small, sporadic pockets of something slightly resembling Agile exist within the company. I was very disappointed by encountering people (in leadership roles) who have only been with Capital insisting "we're doing Agile" [flag!] and who, when you thoughtfully challenge that inaccuracy, you're persona non grata for telling the Emperor that s/he has no clothes.

Please just read my review.