Capital One reviews

3.6

58% would recommend to a friend

(18,855 total reviews)
avatar

Richard D. Fairbank

75% approve of CEO

63% positive business outlook

Capital One has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 18,855 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Capital One employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Finanzas industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

19K reviews
2.0
Dec 7, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some managers are phenomenal and uphold very high standards while creating a very enjoyable work experience Family-like atmosphere with mutually supportive colleagues Compensation is reasonable Work-life balance is excellent Good severance package

Cons

Astonishingly bad talent management, often putting people into roles that they are not qualified for such as placing non technical people in technical roles Unpredictable performance levels that often have little to do with actual performance The misuse of talent tied to the bizarre performance ranking system combine to force top talent into situations where they cannot succeed and are penalized financially and in their career progression Once someone is caught in this position and get a negative review, they are not able to rotate out until they do succeed, which traps employees in a rigid no-win situation when a new assignment would resolve the issue All of the above combine into a method of putting employees onto a PIP and then laying them off without saying that it is a layoff, adding in legalese that puts the onus on the employee for choosing not to take reasonable steps to improve using the PIP The PIP is treated as an acknowledgement of poor performance and a choice not to improve rather than what it is, an opportunity to get severance and escape a bad situation

2.0
Dec 14, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Smart people generally - Modern technology stack (this is dependent on team) - Pretty good pay (around 75th percentile of market), good 401k match - Nice campus, they require 50% of time to be spent in office.

Cons

Capital One practices stack ranking. This was somewhat relaxed during the pandemic, but the low performance bucket was as high as 15-20% at 2023 mid year. They seem to have historically used this as a mechanism to lay people off without having the negative press that accompanies it. Read other reviews to get a sense of what kind of behavior this incentivizes and what sort of culture it creates. If you join as a new employee you will be at a disadvantage compared to those who have been there for a while/have connections within their organization. Even if it does not immediately worry you, I have seen driven, talented engineers driven out of the company because eventually someone in their upper management disliked them. There's definitely a fake nice culture, people will be friendly but knives come out behind closed doors during performance calibrations. A big source of the company's revenue (credit card interest) comes from people trapping themselves in debt. It doesn't feel great to contribute to that.

2.0
Sep 15, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There WERE several pros to working at capital one: - good work life balance - strong family culture - modern technology - investment in associates - focus on using the latest and greatest tech - reasonably competitive salary for low stress

Cons

All of the above has been eroded except for maybe the high WLB. There is still not much to do, as a lot of leaderships focus is on using a chainsaw to cut a sandwich. Theres a lot of talk about generative AI and using LLM's, but the amount of engineering work is nonexistent. Additionally, most of the time is spent on compliance and forcing everything to fit a standard but bad structure. We are solving the wrong problem but very efficiently. I have always complained about the poor practices at capital one but sucked it up for the chill WLB, but recently after 4 years I got PIP'd for no good reason! Their bizarre performance management practices are suddenly throwing random people into a PIP and firing them! So now its just a bad engineering culture with none of the coasting benefits! AVOID

Viewing 7 - 9 of 18,855 Reviews

Glassdoor has 21,229 Capital One reviews submitted anonymously by Capital One employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Capital One is right for you.