I have felt de-valued and diminished as a professional most days. It's nothing more than a paycheck.
Pros
Health, dental, and vision plans. Stock purchase plan. In-office gyms in Richmond and McLean. Pay is average. Company is young and can channel a lot of energy.
Cons
I am neither a stupid nor inexperienced professional, but nearly everyday that I have worked here, I have been spoken to like I am. My experience has been insulted, and my attempts to draw upon past experiences and accumulated skills to enhance project work has been de-valued and discouraged. Management has a filter on with regards to divergent opinions, and devotes lots of talk to analytical thinking, problem solving, hanging out shingles, professional development and transparency but takes actions frequently inconsistent with those values. There is an awful lot of talk, but little if any follow through. Lots of arrogance that would put Wall Street to shame about how innovative, smart, analytical, and high-performance they are. Opportunities are defined by how well your manager likes you and how well he/she advocates for you in the performance management process with the ultimate decision-maker (the process itself is wildly imconsistent and laughable). They will describe your performance with poorly defined qualitative stories and personal anecdotes then try to "benchmark" them against a quantitative scoring systems that creates the appearance of rigor and objectivity in the rankings. Creativity in thinking, business judgement, and results matter far less than your personal style and desire to take-on extraneous responsibilities unrelated to the business. People managers are generally young and poorly-seasoned at managing people and work. They fundamentally do not understand the role of a manager in another professional's development, in managing work effectively, and taking responsibility for their own failures as managers. Professionals are more like line workers here than knowledge workers. You will be asked to do things your manager just doesn't want to do, he/she will act as if the work is beneath them, and your manager will not take responsibility when they make an error. Overall, I would say the value proposition for working at Capital One is not particularly distinctive or defensibly different from any of the other large banks.