Capital One

Extremely relaxed environment, possibly too relaxed.

Very good work/life balance; nobody is expected to work long hours, weekends, etc.

Strong focus on learning & development; lots of resources, subscriptions, and exams paid for, with a decent personal training budget.

Some genuinely great people.

Pieces of work that should realistically take a week end up taking much longer due to politics, process, and poor requirements.

It's very hard to release; too much painful process and paperwork means releases aren’t regular. Big bang releases once a month or less aren't agile.

Too many unnecessary levels of management exist, considering apparently self-managing agile teams. Too much decision-making works its way too high up the management hierarchy and slows teams down.

Lots of SEMs, TPMs, and POs simply don’t understand the technical work enough, which results in confusion. Designers are spread too thinly, often working with many teams at a time, which also doesn’t help.

It’s hard to get excited about the work and the product. Nothing is really innovative, and no boundaries are pushed. It's rare to be able to work with cutting-edge tech because the business deems it too risky to migrate.