Capital One

• Good work/life balance.
• Great office and equipment.
• Regular fully-expensed trips to Nottingham.

Upon joining, you quickly become mired in endless planning and Scrum ceremonies, bookended by talks on numerous corporate initiatives.

Unworkable requirements are simply passed to teams from stakeholders in Nottingham who have remarkably little understanding of the teams in London. Inexperienced managers must then wrestle with these to try and eke out deliverables for stakeholders wedded to unrealistic deadlines.

The graduate scheme is large, and there are a limited number of developers able to support them in their development, adding additional pressure on teams.

If you're looking to grow as a developer, I would simply avoid working here. Although Capital One does have good initiatives for learning and development, these can't make up for the total lack of time spent actually building software.

Grow experience at the top and middle of teams before hiring approximately 1800 junior engineers.

Work out what the London office is for and whether it is, in reality, comparable with a predominantly Nottingham-based business going forward.