Incompetent management, misaligned incentives - Associate Software Engineer Capital One Employee Review

2.0
Mar 19, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Decent pay Hours were very solid - almost never had to work outside hours Work was pretty light, never was pushed super hard for deadlines.

Cons

Lots of really questionable talent. On many occasions, had to do work for other teams because they couldn't get stuff done in time Manager promoted people based on tenure rather than performance. Feedback provided for performance completely vague and irrelevant. Company has awful pip (performance improvement plan) culture with sacrificial lambs on each team to meet the layoff quota. Trying to replicate Amazon's toxic stack ranking but unable to match comp, leading to very short employee retention. Company incentivizes people to build worse versions of open source tooling (so they can use for impactful performance management contribution), forces everyone to use them, then terribly maintains the project/docs, providing minimal to no support. Once everyone has been forced to use said project, it gets deprecated for a newer marginally less crappier version of the same thing.

Explore other reviews about Capital One

5.0
May 27, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good leadership, support from eng managers

Cons

Hard to level up in company

1.0
Jun 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Environment was good, food was decent, free food at my location (dont know if it was allowed but it was good)

Cons

The rittenhouse location is managed by a tyrant, he is an incredibly toxic man and upper management make it the most unbearable place to work. Andy will ask you to come in on days you're not scheduled, and then hold it over your head if you don't. Talks about employees behind their backs constantly. No respect enforced employees talked about each other all the time and there was even name calling in meetings, management did nothing. Worst place I've ever worked in my life frankly and affected my mental health in the worst way. Glad to be out out of there. The place itself has potential but the management at the Rittenhouse branch and above them is absolutely terrible in every regard.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All