Capital One Reviews

Pros

- Great work life balance, unless you're in the team that manages credit card approvals - Heavy emphasis on analytics and SQL, skills that are very valuable and highly transferable - In general you'll work with good people at the individual contributor level who're well intentioned - Competitive pay for the amount of work you do - Good RRSP program and pretty standard stock plan - A strengthening "tech" brand due to the strong exit placements of alumni

Cons

- You'll be working in the credit card industry, which isn't for everyone,. Capital One also isn't very forthcoming about this during recruiting. - Analysis paralysis, the flip side of the heavy emphasis on analytics is that there is a general sense of false precision, and you'll be asked to do the same analysis a hundred different ways for very little incremental insight. - Because the work is concentrated on a single industry, the learning curve will be steep at first, and you'll quickly become knowledgable in credit cards, but it'll flatten out thereafter unless you want to build extremely niche knowledge in one particular aspect of credit card (e.g. over-limit fees). - Management is a mixed bag, while there are a few truly inspirational leaders, there are also managers who are very "cliquey" and will only promote associates who're close to them, there are also a lot of first-time managers who were promoted to people management position based on their individual contribution and they're not well equipped to lead teams.

Pros

- Good starting salary - Strong in analytics - Nice junior coworkers, who share the pain

Cons

- Management: A culture of consistently promoting self-serving, political climbing managers who are generally willing to trade-off their associates well-being for business results and a personal promotion. - Associates: A culture of being afraid to leave despite being depressed, because of tight-knit friendship circles at work, above-industry pay, and the impression that they are working with "the smartest people in Toronto" - Symptoms of depression I've seen in myself and many others: Emotional numbness, insomnia, hopelessness, overwhelming dread, zero self-worth, and a total inability to believe that things can be better. All of which feel normal in the moment, and insane in hindsight. Also being afraid to express these feelings, partially because I've experienced and seen other managers tell their associates off for “being negative”. This is despite all the mental health training for managers. There are also some truly great managers, but they are the minority and won't get promoted as quickly compared to the ones who optimize for self-gain.

Pros

- Great compensation and benefits package (therapist coverage went up to $3000 this year!). - Some managers are very invested in your development and learning. - Lots of friendly and smart people, the open culture makes it easy to work with each other and make friends.

Cons

- Your experience varies GREATLY depending on your manager, there are some truly useless managers that somehow continue to get promoted into more senior roles. Lots of nepotism and favouritism exhibited by senior leaders. - HR has no idea how to proactively ensure fairness; certain groups are given random competitive salary increases while others are left behind. Significant salary gaps between job families. - Nothing exciting happening in Canada, very difficult to get things done if you do have good ideas. Leadership tries to get you excited about the future by rolling out a brand strategy that is unrealistic and won't change anything, or by saying they have aspirations to grow but with no specifics on how. - Extremely high turnover (at least 50% of the people you started with will be gone within 2 years) yet leadership refuses to acknowledge the problem and make changes that results in higher morale and happiness.