Pros
1) Continuous learning: Free access to Udemy, Coursera, Masterclass. Lots of internally hosted learning sessions. Last day of every month reserved for professional development. 2) Two internal data conferences each year to stay up-to-date on latest modelling techniques and projects around the business you could learn from / adapt. 3) Use standard DS tools/platforms - python, SQL (Snowflake), pySpark (Databricks), AWS 4) Relatively flat structure - you can easily talk to your skip-level / director+ leaders without needing to go through your manager. 5) Brand recognition (more so in the US, but not too bad in Canada) - Good name to add to your resume, especially if you plan to work in the US in the future. 6) Good work-life balance 7) Relatively good compensation when compared to other financial institutions. Lags behind when compared to FinTechs (e.g. Wealthsimple) or Tech companies (e.g. Microsoft). 8) They are starting to define separate paths for People Leaders and Individual Contributors.
Cons
1) If your plan is to use this as an entry point to migrate to the US, beware that the success rate is only ~50%. Different teams have different appetites for sponsoring international employees to relocate. Plus, the levelling is off by one - e.g. a Canadian Manager is equivalent to a US Senior Manager (in terms of scope/responsibilities), so if you move at the same title, you're kinda getting a demotion. 2.1) The Canadian division is generally forgotten in the context of Capital One's overall footprint. You'll find yourself following Enterprise policies that are too cumbersome for the size of the Canadian business, taking you twice as long to deliver projects. 2.2) Providing feedback is meaningless because you're from a very small part of the business. Companies of similar size (~800 employees) would move much faster to scale the business, but Capital One Canada cannot. 2.3) CEO schedules annual strategy meeting every year on a known Canadian statutory holiday and refers to his company as a "national" (US) bank. 2.4) You will not get early access to employee-facing tools (e.g. Gemini) because they have to go through a separate risk review for a different country (which they forget initially because a lot of US employees don't realize we have operations in Canada). 3) Highly dependent on Capital One US to deliver projects due to intertwined infrastructure, leading to extended project timelines or outright deprioritization. 4) Highly regulated industry, requiring lots of risk reviews, extending project timelines. Makes point 3 worse. 5) Distribution of DSs/DAs is not equitable across teams - depending on your team, you might be very understaffed relative to the amount of work. 6) There is a ceiling for promotions. You will likely make it to Manager/Sr Manager but no higher. A bit heavy on middle management, and lots of Manager-level DSs have very little scope since we're not scaling. Why can't we scale? Refer to points 2 and 3. We used to have a VP of Data, but when he left, the data org was subsumed into a Business VP's org.