Capital One

I am a 15-year IT associate at Capital One in Richmond.

The pros of working for this company include decent pay, good benefits, and recently, exposure to current technologies.

The best benefit of working at Capital One is the fairly generous vacation package. I receive 4 weeks of vacation with the option to buy an additional week for a small price.

My recent experiences (last 3 years) in Capital One IT have been very unpleasant.

Firstly, the culture at Capital One is competitive, nervous, and fearful. The primary reason for the horrible atmosphere is the Forced Distribution performance management practice. Capital One shoehorns associates into performance ratings with 15-20% receiving bad ratings.

As you might imagine in a corporate setting like this, the decisions on who receives what rating are highly political. While I have never received a bad rating in 15 years, I rarely am acknowledged for the excellent work I produce and have only received above-average ratings in years where I expressed displeasure in previous ratings.

So courtesy of the horrible performance management practices, what you end up with is a group of nervous, scared associates who are afraid of receiving bad ratings or perhaps even losing their jobs. The response to that by many associates is to work over 60-hour work weeks and rarely take vacation out of fear. Most associates fall into this category.

I'm always saddened to see fellow associates needlessly work long hours and send emails around midnight out of fear. It's really sad and super commonplace.

The culture is horrible. Plus, the fear of layoffs is never far away.

Management at Capital One is horrendous. The typical Capital One middle manager is compromised, scared, and a sellout.

These poor folks sit together in conference rooms twice a year, "cross-calibrating" their associates in an effort to determine who gets screwed with a bad rating. It is awful.

Capital One has a ton of strong associates; only about 5% in IT are truly bad. So these managers try to convince each other and their associates (keeping in mind the 15-20% bad rating forced distribution) that somehow Associate A, who is a great worker and nice person, should be told they suck for the year.

There is NO work-life balance in Capital One IT. It is not because there is so much work; it is because there is so much fear.

A truly horrendous place to work.

Drop the forced distribution performance management practice at once.