Capco Reviews

Pros

It genuinely is a great place to work. If they fix the 2 things highlighted in the cons section it’s a 5/5 for me People are great The leadership is great; Chris Ford is especially the best as he is very transparent and authentic Fortunate to have great projects which were high impact The in person aspect pre covid was what made it special here from a work and social aspect

Cons

The performance evaluation system is very broken; median/average scores are pretty high so it skews people’s actual performance scores. Compensation based on performance isn’t the best either. Raise based on near perfect performance scores was less than inflation. Bonuses were not the best either.

Pros

Great people, perks, flexibility and office setting

Cons

Hard to get into the inner circle

Pros

There are/were good, smart and driven people. There are niche digital transformation projects in banking and insurance sectors. Canada CEO Chris Ford is great and publishes weekly blogs to keep employees engaged. If you want to work at a company where they focus on delivery of digital transformation solutions, then this is the place to be.

Cons

Will just start off with this - there is a reason why there has been so much turnover at Capco. This is not a "normal" amount of attrition. They will deny it but the system and business is fundamentally flawed, which is why good people have left and good ones will leave. While there are good people at Capco, there are also many toxic ones, and seemingly more so at the management and leadership levels. Be prepared to get yelled at, made to cry, berated and humiliated. They'll put pressure on you to deliver at ridiculous timelines which will lead to the next point about work-life balance. If you're looking for work-life balance, this is not the place to be. Be prepared to work 12 hour days, while also being expected to participate in other firm activities (we call it contribution). However, even if you contribute, you might not get credit for it. The leadership/management team will tell you that it's OK because you'll get acknowledgement during year end and bonus payouts, or you can take time in lieu but don't trust them. You won't have time to take off in lieu and even if you take time off, it will go against your billability and lead to lower ratings. The year-end bonus and pay increases are also a myth, which is..... Don't expect any extra compensation. Your salary will stagnate and through my last few years here, I haven't had any salary adjustments even for inflation. The only way to a higher salary is through promotion to higher levels, which will lead to another point about how fundamentally broken their performance review system is. Before getting there, bonuses are very low. With jobs in industry, you're often looking at a bonus target (let's say 10%, 15%, 20%, etc) of salary. Here, there isn't a bonus target because it could very well be 0 or at least close to it. Their RRSP matching plans are also terrible so don't count on them for retirement. The performance reviews are fundamentally broken. You're not judged based on your merits and accomplishments, but rather it's a bunch of 'senior' people in a room, where they haven't worked with you, judging you for your accomplishments. Even if you think you did well, you could very well end up with a bad rating. The entire process is not transparent, where even your coaches may not know exactly why you received the rating you did. There's also blatant favourtism in the company. Just beware that this happens. Last point is about the work. If you're looking to do delivery work, then this is the place to be. If you're looking to do strategy work, it's virtually non-existent at Capco. They're a very delivery focused firm. While it's good experience and you will learn a lot about digital transformation, this is the only thing you'll touch. They also mostly focus on retail banking and insurance. "The Capital Markets Company" is very ironic because we don't do ANY capital markets here. Also, if you're looking to get into other types of technology such as cyber security, security, big data, AI and Machine Learning, RPA, etc, they're virtually non-existent. You're better off working in industry or at a bigger firm to get this exposure.

Pros

Great people and dynamic atmosphere. No silos

Cons

Some favouritism. Not all domains have equal depth. Project experiences can be inconsistent

Pros

Decent firm with an increasing focus on technology implementation. Strong resources across the domains of project delivery, technology solutioning, and architecture. Deteriorating pipeline of business resources, who are now leaving the firm as the culture and nature of work have shifted as a result of reduced project availability across the pandemic, and further predicted to decline with the recent acquisition. You will enjoy your time here if this is what you are seeking, in contrast to those of us who joined looking to build a career in management consulting. Generous benefit packages and forward thinking local management. Entertaining and transparent blog posts from the regional CEO Chris Ford, fond of his leadership capabilities which stand out in relation to his local peers and global leadership. Inclusive culture with an open door policy, which used to be quite flat while in-office. Working from home has made the structure feel much more hierarchical and siloed than it used to be without any of the organic office interactions. Most clients are local, save for a few in other parts of Canada. This can be a positive or negative depending on your personal and family commitments. If you are intending on joining consulting for travel among other typical consulting perks, this is not the firm for you. At any given moment, there are only a couple of solid projects that will change the trajectory of your career for the better, however getting onto these top tier projects or aligning oneself to a project manager on a string of these projects is often an uphill battle. In this current economic environment and with recent departures, you are more than likely to end up on a mediocre implementation project where resourcing is currently a necessity, often at odds with your own staffing preferences. On the bright side, maximum utilization is currently a guarantee. Pretty marketing materials and front-end interfaces do a great job hiding what this firm has become. Most messaging highlights strategic innovation and forward thinking (i.e. "the future now"), which is far from the implementation heavy direction the firm has been doubling down on over the last few years using simple back end technologies. Similarly, the entrepreneurial nature of the firm that we often tout is becoming less of a reality as we are swallowed by an international conglomerate. Office events, including Beer Fridays are great so you can drink yourself out of your misery. Currently on hold due to the pandemic.

Cons

The most significant issues plaguing the firm right now include deteriorating culture, declining quality of work, and mismanaged expectations. Your quality of life will suffer here: 1) Our salary raises are consistently lower than inflationary increases and determined with minimal input from us. You will have to fight tooth and nail to have this increased post-round tables, while being labeled a flight risk in the process. The talent retention policy is also similarly weak, offering too little, too late. 2) Our bonuses are also mediocre relative to industry peers, though leadership will deny this, indicating that we are at the top of our peer group. What peer group are we talking about? Wipro, Tata, and Infosys? Because that's where we are headed. 3) Eating hours is expected. Working hours almost always exceed your allotted billable hours with nowhere to log this extra time. You will not be compensated or rewarded for this overtime, while round table comparisons with peers on lighter projects will be similarly weighted to yourself. 4) Your mental health will deteriorate when continually bullied by toxic project managers. The upward feedback mechanism is useless, with feedback being unable to be reported truly anonymously since project teams are so small. Often your best bet is sending your feedback directly to their coach, though this is still risky since many coaching relationships are quite informal, so the anonymity of your direct feedback may be compromised. Also, going straight to HR has proven to be useless and often detrimental to peers who have attempted this. 5) Abusive project managers punish team members who go to resourcing to escape projects that are detrimental to their career or mental health. These same project managers deny those of us with families to manage our commitments in the evenings, especially when working for a younger or single workstream lead with no frame of reference. 6) Projects are often understaffed or on short timelines to allow the firm to be able to offer a lower cost than our peers. Project managers are afraid to push back on Partner expectations, and proceed to put the burden of work on the rest of us who have limited input on pushing back on project scope as it is being defined. The majority of the Partners are hands off and have not done actual project work in a long time, resulting in their ability to estimate work effort to be consistently off the mark. 7) Understaffed projects and those with smaller teams often lead to social isolation, which is further compounded by being away from your family, and not having your work effort or extra hours recognized at round tables. 8) You are unable to ask for help from senior peers without it being held against you. Since optics are so important at this firm, and perceived reputations are spread quickly, PMs try to salvage a project independently rather than meet with their Partner lead. Managing a workstream is often a siloed journey where you feign competency and green status updates to avoid backlash. 9) The lack of recognition, support, meaningful work, work life balance, and trusted communication at this firm will push you toward burnout faster than you ever knew was possible. Staff are referred to as resources here, and leadership and HR truly mean it. Most feel disposable and undermined especially after year end, where the company rating system is heavily mismatched with performance results and incentives. Very few staff have faith in the current performance management system, which is highly subjective, often anchored to project rather than individual outcomes, and heavily in need of a revamp. There is a heavy misalignment between project managers on how to use the rating system, which causes friction in year end comparisons across peer groups. 10) Long drawn out cookie-cutter projects across the same client defeat the purpose of joining a consulting firm. Often the perks of working in consulting, including diversified project exposure, outweigh the sacrifices that come along with this career. However at a firm like Capco where travel, incentives, and expenses are constrained and infrequent, the added drawback of working on a singular client relegate the firm experience to one resembling industry clientele. A lot of the policies that are marketed to prospective hires are purely marketing material and rarely adhered to. I heavily encourage prospective hires to speak to those of us currently working here about the perks you are told about in recruiting (i.e. whether you can truly expense course fees or evening meals). There are quite a few cultural issues at this company that have been progressively worsening, with the pandemic and recent acquisition only accelerating these. The heart of some senior leadership are in the right place, but as the firm grows, CATO leadership's hands seem to be tied with how much they can actually do. Some of these cultural issues are as follows: 1) While CATO is more forward thinking and digitally inclined than our peer international offices, the misalignment and head office bureaucracy continues to grow. Most leadership have implied they were also unaware of the recent acquisition until a few days before the rest of us found out. On its current trajectory, this acquisition will only have negative implications on the current office culture many were drawn to CATO for. 2) The firm is bad at managing and committing to expectations and timelines, and is perceived by staff to be heavy on lip service (e.g. most notably our recently delayed promotion results and April 2020 lay offs). Leadership are good at saying the right things but very poor at executing and managing expectations. This time last year, many of us were reassured by Lance and Chris that no pandemic related layoffs were planned, while less than a couple of weeks later many peers were laid off. Now we are being told that the Wipro acquisition will not result in cost synergies, while Wipro press releases and exchange filings explicitly state that there are identified cost synergies to be realized post integration. While we can assume that most of these synergies will affect manual/inefficient corporate service groups, many of us are also worried about the inevitability of our roles and progression being baselined with Wipro. 3) It is ironic that we are a consulting firm when we have so many internal inefficiencies and issues that we barely look into. We have an entire army of critical thinkers who would more than gladly submit anonymous feedback if simply given an intake form or virtual suggestion box. Our bench is also very poorly utilized, where many of those resources could be working on items like the above. Given the current exodus, there is no current bench, which further amplifies the internal problems the firm has since there are no resources to work on rectifying these. 4) Leadership do not care about project managers abilities to manage downward, and are perceived to be easily influenced. For example, toxic project managers that have been formally reprimanded for their treatment of project staff continue to be praised in leadership communications, and are continually rewarded as long as they bring in sales. Others that have not been formally reported also continue to affect the mental health of project staff since there is no optimal way to report them. A lot of the longer term employees at this firm should be heavily scrutinized in terms of their value add, and whether they are being retained out of convenience or because they truly benefit the firm and help retain talent rather than drive people out. 5) Learning and development is a mockery. As a consulting firm, where people should be the firm's assets, the firm continues to cut funding for learning opportunities, relying on flyover lunch and learns with less value than most Wikipedia articles. Day long courses are often very introductory and heavily scrutinized by project managers for impacting billability and project work. It boggles the mind that in the 21st century with digital course mediums, our L&D programs and curriculums are still in the stone age, offered on a periodic basis and not as soon as you require the content. Attendance spots for courses are typically filled by junior level resources, who still require oversight from those of us with more experience, further indicating the surface level depth and inapplicability of the content to day to day business. Project assets are also often reinventions of the same wheel since there is very little knowledge sharing across projects external to individual Partner accounts. 6) The prestige of the brand has also been steadily deteriorating as we shift toward becoming an implementation tech shop, hiring recruits from no-name brands and lower tier competitors. If you are fond of software development and implementation, you will better resonate with the current direction we are headed in than most of the current business workforce.

Pros

1) Working from home - thank god! 2) Getting paid on time (except for delayed bonuses) 3) Some interesting colleagues

Cons

Chris Ford continues to issue layoffs. He's over compensating for problems caused by fairly young, inexperienced management as they "try" to attempt to navigate the global crisis against more competitive and mature Consulting firms like CGI, Deloitte. Financial and project targets can still be hit with both flat and multi-level hierarchies - that's not the issue - it's the inexperienced management! Last year Chris gave his employees a false sense of security about the layoff situation (saying layoffs wouldn't happen) at a town hall, and soon layoffs appeared. Obviously, layoffs can be executed at any time, but why make useless remarks like that Chris?? HR could probably use some reshuffling too. While they are obviously there to defend the company (and not its employees), a lot of their responses on here have so many mischaracterizations, and seem antagonizing to their employees. Obviously no one will go to HR to get help if something is wrong. Admit your mistakes, take the higher road. I could go on and on, but since I'll be departing soon, I'll end it there.