Capital One reviews

Management creates a toxic workplace. The twice yearly review process discourages teamwork and kills morale by forcing managers to put 20% or more of their reports on a performance plan or terminiating them. This is no way to create a good work environment or culture. Promotions are subject to cronyism and engineers are encouraged to look out only for themselves. Valuable, high-performing engineers are not developed or promoted. With the recent Chicago lay-off announcements, morale is terrible. It seems like the Virginia offices are better places to work, but steer clear of the Chicago and Rolling Meadows locations if you are looking for a safe workplace. There is no opportunity there.

The induction to the company speaks to the core values and competencies. The CEO of the company also reinforces these aspects. Yet sadly those messages and behaviors are completely lost once in the business, especially at the SVP level down, where I mainly interacted. It is a completely political environment no matter what the location, and I found more weak SVP's and VP's in COF than I have ever seen or would have believed. Owing to their weakness they live in the blame culture but do this in deceptive ways, i.e. make emotive statements of unhappiness, but have no evidence to back it up. However the damage is done as the other weak line management would react to the statement and not be strong enough to stand up and ask for proof. Hence most of the time is either fire fighting, or trying to politically CYA or deflect these statements without substance. Trouble is it is endemic within their organization and will take a significant clear out to change things. I tired of incorrect statements constantly being made to me of my staff and any attempt to not act in the way the rest of the company, i.e. demand proof, is met with accusations that you are not a team player and didn't I know that if an SVP expressed their concern at person X, they didn't need proof, their comment was more than enough.... Serious. Coupled with this, sadly their promotion system is so convoluted and without credibility is is actually causing great people to leave, rather than retaining the talent. They run a system know as cross calibration, where all line managers from a team sit together and discuss every member of staff and rank them accordingly. Trouble is how do you compare a lawyer with a financier? Much less if I want my team members to be ranked at X then I need to argue down all of my peers until I 'get my way'. A horribly amateurish and unprofessional way to determine pay raises, bonus and promotions, which in themselves take at least 12 months to achieve from an exceptional rating. Needless to say many many great people got fed up of this and would leave, meaning the attrition rate was shamefully high and the loss was of the top caliber people. Needless to say after 18 months I found an alternative role outside of the company in a culture much more respectful and transparent.