What’s it like for Software Engineers at Capital One? Work-Life balance? Pay? Exciting projects? Career Advancement? Job Security? Pros/Cons? Do they really follow through on the line “we are a tech company trying to disrupt banking”?
Amazing WLB, pay is great for the amount of hours but the quality of work depends on the team.
[Blind] Check out this post! What's it like at Capital One? (Career) https://us.teamblind.com/s/xMXaHY04 Your answer, above
Y'all are severely overestimating the quality of engineering talent in the wild. COF has SHARP engineers and developers. Having said that, the wlb/culture is hit or miss. Stack ranking, yo. Stay away IMHO.
Too much hiring , mediocre developers , some people I knew didn’t know what recursion was
Generally most tenured leaders (at Sr Manager - VP levels) are quite behind the times (tech wise). Most effort is in program management and in "building your brand" and 75% bandwidth is used for optics management which dovetails into stack ranking. Coming from a tech culture , I find this a bad use of my time, although there are a few smart people here. You will probably learn about Dev Ops and AWS and reach a fair degree of proficiency within a year. Then leave.
Honestly, I know a lot of people complain and you'll tend to have negative bias on a platform like blind but in my experience it is a growing company with great work life balance. Talent is hit or miss but that also brings in an opportunity as you have lots of places to shine. Going into a mature tech company can be great but can also be a double edged sword as you don't get to go in on the ground floor for many projects. With Cap One where they are trying to jump on as a tech company, you might get lucky and get the opportunity to work on new technologies. For example, we work on everything from mobile dev (iOS, Web) to backend (Go, Clojure, Node Lamdas) to CICD automation for most. Don't think I would have gotten that breadth in other companies and has helped me grow a lot in the past few years. To answer specifics: WLB: Great. Work is chill. Most people work 9-4 and chill out on Fridays. You can WFH most days if your team is cool and no tracking for holidays. More like an honor system. Pay: Decent and competitive for the area. Exciting Projects: Depends where you land. Got lucky and got to work on new projects with the aforementioned languages. Like every other company this is subjective on the team you land. Career Advancement: Stack ranking so has its pros and cons. The only thing that might be beneficial is that the competition isn't cutting edge. But this is a pain point. Job Security: Very high. Even if you're gonna be laid off, you'll probably know it 3-4 months in advance and not difficult to find internal transfers. Lastly, as others have mentioned. The company is a 'developing' tech company. It is definitely the best 'tech bank' I've worked for but not a full tech company yet.
What’s it like working at CapitalOne today? Has anything changed since 2018? Especially after the breach? I am at my mid 30s with two kids and likely get an offer at Capital One IAM team. Also interviewing with one of the faang and a media company and a startup that has lacking number of eng. I think C1 fits my lifestyle the best if above comment still holds true. I currently work remotely and WLB is really important.
Did you end up going to capital one for any period of time? If so, thoughts? If not, why not?
Worked there for a bit as a TDP. Talent is kind of unimpressive but WLB can't be beat (Richmond office, unsure of others). Pay was quite high for the area. Currently migrating everything to AWS, so no new features are being implemented until that's done. Don't be fooled by that "tech company" line, they're still a bank at the end of the day.
I’ve never worked for a bank, what are the downsides compared to say a typical consumer tech company?
Regulatory requirements are challenging. Internally built tools and frameworks are not great. Nice people most the time. Lots of politics in some orgs.