Capital One

• Latest Technology
• Aggressive move to AWS/Cloud

Brain drain as small business cards grow; technology leaders moving into management.

Managers are not given good management training.

Culture of competition means nobody wants to share, and it benefits each other to make you look bad.

Managers are supposed to mentor you, but it's very much sink or swim.

Management quality is wildly variable.

Management direction is vague.

Advancement is by making yourself visible to higher levels rather than delivering.

"Calibrations" is a forced-ranking system where 25% are bad, 50% are good, and 25% are great. Rankings are based on managers advocating for employees. It can get ugly.

• Get coordinated on management style.
• Lots of talking points that are not realized.
  • Assume positive intent – most managers assume negative intent.
  • Servant Leadership – it's not just a buzzword or attitude; it's a movement and style of management that requires training.
  • Self-adjusting teams – you can't assign people leadership positions and expect them to lead without authority. Rather than assign technical leads, let leaders emerge from within the team. Even if a person is junior, if they're ready to lead, let them lead.
• "Calibrations" are a terrible idea invented by Jack "Neutron John" Welch in the 80s and have long been discarded by most companies as a bad practice. Capital One would be wise to discard it as well.