Rise of Capital One?
I have been keeping tabs on Capital One, and I have to say they are moving up in my perception rankings. Their Business Analyst and SWE positions seem to be very competitive with solid pay and WLB (and has been for some time).
The real surprise to me is the rise of their commercial, corporate, and investment banking divisions. I have heard nothing but good things about their culture and my interviews for their commercial banking division are solid. Originally, I was unsure of the prospects at Capital One; but, their continued recruitment during economic headwinds and rising perception are making me consider them seriously over some other banks. I was curious about any perspectives on Capital One and their practice. Are they a good place to start a career in for banking or is there a still ways for them to go to be competitive with the likes of PNCs commerical banking division.
Good retail bank and very technology forward. Great location in the DC area. Definitely a respectable place to start a career with good pay and WLB in the software engineer, product manager, and business analyst positions.
Not a relevant player in investment banking or M&A advisory. Would definitely go elsewhere if anybody wants those reps.
Thoughts on their venture or venture X card? I think it’s gonna be my first annual fee card soon
Venture X card is GOATed. Card pays for itself
If you travel more than 2x a year def go for Venture X, if not go for Venture. If you also live in Dallas, DC, or Denver you have access to the Capital One signature lounges which make the cards way more valuable.
Double check transfer options. If you want domestic flights to Hawaii, California, Florida you don’t have a lot of options. International options are more plentiful. I ended up using the bonus for Amazon gift cards and deleting the account
Just finished my summer as a BA, and headed back for FT
Can't recommend it enough. 115k TC (+ 22k signing) for 40 hour weeks straight out of UG, great development-focused culture, and strong exit opps into tech made it a no brainer for me. BA teams seem to have optimized the chill:driven ratio, most people are laid back but very sharp
What office is this? I’ve been there for 1.5 years and your base is higher than mine.
Thats TC, ill edit my comment to reflect that. Weird that your base isn't higher though? A couple SBAs on my team said their base was 125 and also have 1.5 YOE
This checks out - one of my high school buddies went there out of a top undergrad instead of going to consulting and is very happy he did.
Hey, that sounds great! I am heading over to C1 this upcoming summer as a BA and I was wondering what the return offers look like. Also, does every returning BA get a 22k signing bonus? Do you potentially have any info on exit opps as well? Thank you so much!
Unsure on returns, by my estimate 70-80%. Im not sure about the signing bonus but thats what my cohort got. Exit opps are varied, some people jump to MBB/T2 if they dont want to be in tech/fs long term, a lot exit to big tech bizops/s&o type roles, a few also pivot to PM within C1.
IB group is new, they acquired triple tree and kippsdesanto.
They work hard, barely a discount in pay from what I’ve been told from people in that group. Typical IB hours.
Is there culture more like a traditional bank? My BA friends say the culture is pretty laid back and brainy. Does this culture permeate to the investment banking division?
I dont know what BA work entails. I have a friend who did DCM Syndications and moved downstream to their commercial/corporate banking group. Culture seems to be chill in the sense that you're not expected to ruin your life over work but during live deals or fire drills get your shit done. Like any other bank, I assume it would be very frowned upon for someone to completely log off at 5pm.
I'm a BA and have a buddy whos an analyst at Kipps. I don't think the culture really permeates, we have separate offices and I've never heard of a BA interfacing with the IB arms
It seems like the interview process is pretty intense like 7+ rounds
Yeah they’re strategy team is competing w offers from MBB and beating almost every T2
No one with an MBB offer would take Capital One. Highly doubt it for T2 as well
Agree with the MBB point, but I know plenty of BA/SA that took it over T2. Note that these folks had an interest in tech/fs/fintech previously or didn't want to travel/wanted wlb, yes it would be silly to take C1 if you wanted to do PE
MBB I would agree. T2 I have seen it happen numerous times. The WLB and Capital One + comparable compensation + longer term project ownership make it an attractive value prop for many people thinking between T2 and Cap One.
They are definitely not competing with MBB for talent. Perhaps T2.
Check their LinkedIn. Practically every senior hire is from MBB, including Associate Partners and Partners.
I personally know multiple people who chose Capital One over MBB.
Am I saying it's better? No.
Does it appeal to a fair amount of people interested in tech, financial services, and a good WLB: yes.
Can’t speak to IB, but the Commercial/Corporate Banking pay is extremely competitive and the culture seems great. They seem to be active in specialized groups (not generalist CB)
Do you know which groups?
Not sure about other roles at capital one, but their SWE positions are not “competitive with solid pay” lol. I recently got an offer there after interviewing for fun, it was for a senior software engineer position, and it was still lower than what I got paid as an entry level SWE at a FAANG-esque company. With much less benefits.
But yeah compared to some random unknown company or some weird ass startup it’s still a decent option.
I have heard about this phenomenon for senior SWEs; however, for interns and new grads there is strong competition for these positions. HR informed me they had to shut down applications for SWE full time new grad positions in 4 days. It is definitely not FAANG level yet ofc, but compared to other banks they seem to pay undergrads well.
Yeah the pay for TDPs is very good and offers a solid pipeline to FAANG and other popular tech & FinTech exits. The general long-term strategy here is building a strong internal pipeline to avoid hiring externally for SWEs below I want to say Manager. TDPs also get a baked in bump to their pay, so a Principal Associate TDP will almost always have a higher pay than an external hire PA.
Still a lot of SWEs internally conflate the potential FAANG exits and leadership's/bank's technology focus & aspirations, and are upset that the pay ranges are not comparable to FAANG. Personally I think its kinda silly. We are a bank, we pay more than our actual competitors in the space by and large, and from what I've seen and heard do have a pretty big leg-up on our competitors in investing in the tech space and giving tech people cool stuff to work on.
I echo the same issue. Pay is higher than what the street offers us, but still lower than tech companies. Also, banks generally aren't where SWE's want to end up bc we get treated like crap by front office people who think we're somehow worse than them. Why would I take lower comp, worse working environments, and extremely outdated tech where my job is maintaining php code written by moses when I can join a FAANG+ company and get better benefits, promotion, comp, and work with the most innovative tech out there. That being said, of the banks C1 is better than the others, but being the best of the worst doesn't make you good
I can only really speak to the tech and swe element here, and from my perspective its probably one of the best banks, but just meh in terms of the grander scheme of tech, Not a single bank is anyone's desired destination, so capital one shifting towards modernizing their tech and becoming fully AWS compatible is definitely a step in the right direction. As for comp on tech side, it's lower than other tech roles, but higher than banks. Overall if I had to chose a bank, capitol one would be a better choice than basically any other.
Capital one is a great spot. You can find a handful of people that went from analyst to director in 4 years and that's 300K comp. In 3-4 years you can then hit VP which is 500K+ cash comp and interesting work. You can hop to fintechs and there's a handful that have gone to fintech venture too. And, you get to explore different types of roles (finance, HR, data science if you wanted) vs. just different content with same type of work (what MBB offers with strategy work across topics). Think it's a very strong value prop, and I'd push back that noone takes it over MBB. There are a handful of kids in the strategy team every year that interned at MBB, got returns, and looked elsewhere for full time. Not arguing it's on par with MBB from a talent perspective, but there is definitley a kid or two each year on the strategy team tha chose it over an MBB cross offer..
Analyst to director in 4 years is cap, analyst to SM in 4 years is literally best possible outcome. Promo timelines are slowing down too. Source: I am a BA
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