Capital One

The campus and atmosphere are very nice, but management is nonexistent.

I was hired on through contract for 3 months, contract to hire. After being on the job for a couple of weeks, the manager above my manager was let go. (Although I didn't meet him, I gather that he was a manager with drive who wanted to accomplish something.) After that point, three new full-time employees were hired onto the team, and the four existing contractors were let go.

Capital One's management has no plan. They hire engineers, give them no products or requirements, and assume they will innovate like a startup. Upon asking for requirements from management (whom aren't located in Plano), we were directed to a manager who didn't communicate with the team. (And were told not to waste his time by scheduling meetings with him.)

There were only 5 people at the company who had been there longer than a year. Everyone was new and had little to no idea how things worked. Being a bank, they rely heavily on "friend of a friend" hiring. Other than the penetration testing contractors that worked near us, no one really did any real work from what I could see.

Make long-term and short-term plans before hiring more people.

Reward people based on merit, not due to workplace politics.

Cull the apathetic management culture before layoffs occur due to mismanagement.