All they care about is finding 10x-ers from their college pipeline - Senior Software Engineer Capital One Employee Review

2.0
Mar 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-great pay for a non-FAANG -access to all the latest tools -nice campus -genuinely smart coworkers that you can learn a lot from

Cons

-their model is to hire as many college grads as they can then burn through them in search of the handful of surviving 10x devs who will inherit entire products to maintain -if you're not a college hire you're a second class citizen -every 6 months you have to fight for your life as they lay off ~10% of the workforce -they're going all-in on AI, I have 4 different agents installed on my laptop right now and get in trouble if I don't use them for everything I do even when it doesn't make sense to -there's a huge focus on improving velocity above all else right now so nothing gets properly tested before it's jammed into prod -as a result of all of the above there are frequent 2am pager duty calls when the spaghetti we call software breaks and no one knows how to fix it because all the SMEs were either fired or quit

Explore other reviews about Capital One

5.0
Jul 20, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great place to work, people are nice

Cons

stack ranking is tough all the time

2.0
Jul 15, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Salary, benefits, mobility for internal transfers

Cons

I have been a part of Capital One for more than 20 years, most of my career. It was an exciting growth culture in the early years. Our team culture was very strong. People looked out for each other and worked toward a collective good. Around 2019 a shift began in leadership. Politics became more important and forced distribution, stack ranking, and performance management targets became more prevalent. When the pandemic hit, it broke the strong in person culture of this company. Many left for the lure of FAANG and other companies offering remote work for promotion and higher pay. It was a chance to jump the line and come back later. In the meantime COF hired people who tired of the relentless pace of Amazon, Google, and other tech companies. We also hired in big bank culture of JPM Chase and Goldman. This has resulted in a toxic, political, cutthroat culture with constant reorgs. I’m planning to leave this organization in the next 12 months. It is sad what it has become. I know tenured leaders, great people who look out for others and have helped me succeed over the years, who are miserable here. DFS colleagues from the acquisition are leaving in droves.

5
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