Capital One

Good benefit package. Good WLB.

It is a bank, meaning that C1 does not have a good tech culture that they are bragging about. If you decide to join, you might want to be mindful of selecting a good group. Talk to your future coworkers before you join. It will help.

For me, it had been the worst experience in my career so far. I happened to experience organizational changes a few months later after I joined. I can write a book to rant about my experience with C1, but I would like my review to be served as an informational guide for people who are considering accepting an offer:

1. The work is easy. The majority of the time I spent here is in meetings, listening to other people argue about some nonsense and work that the manager tries to put the team through in order to make us look busy.

2. There is a chance that you can fall under a horrible manager. It depends on how “lucky” you are because reorgs happen often. By the way, the definition of an “incompetent leader” to me: full of ego, hollow in knowledge, insecure, micromanaging, bossy, couldn’t care less about employee’s wellbeing. It was my first time encountering toxic people in my life, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

3. Stack ranking at a bank? As many of the other reviews have mentioned, your performance is evaluated against people at the same level as you. If you get a manager who is willing to advocate for you, then you are the lucky one. Although it is not guaranteed that you will get an “above strong” rating, your life will still be easier. If you happen to get a bad manager who only cares about the time you put into nonsense work because they don’t know much about tech, you will be as miserable as me :). Choose wisely.

Time is the most important thing in people’s lives. That’s why the punishment for breaking laws is to take valuable time away from people.

Take care of your good people and don’t make them feel like they are serving sentences. If someone finishes their job quickly, it does not mean that they want more work if there’s no upward momentum in terms of career. In addition, the work at C1 does not help people to grow.

With that said, please don’t be selfish and focus solely on what YOU want. It is the people that matter, and they will help you if you are willing to help them :).