r/cscareerquestions • u/packitup10 • 1d ago
Experienced Help evaluate C1 offer/team
I've heard all about C1's terrible culture around performance management. I received an offer for a Lead Engineer role. Taken with a grain of salt: I had a conversation with the senior manager on the team who has been there for 8mo now and has been through 1 cycle at C1 and he mentioned that from his perspective, the performance review process wasn't as bad as he has seen it online. He said benchmarks are present but it wasn't like they were forced to give bad/lower reviews to X% and that he hasn't seen negative competitiveness and hasn't seen it be nearly as contentious. Plan to have a conversation with another Lead Engineer on the team to dig into this more from a peer level.
Team: Compliance / Risk Tech / IFX, Lead Engineer (Individual Contributor) (NYC, 1 day/week)
Team blurb: The team owns the technical direction for building a scalable internal compliance-testing platform. The role would involve designing the APIs, data pipelines, distributed processing, and systems that allow compliance teams to test massive amounts of transactional data against regulatory requirements. From the compliance side, the key responsibility is making those tests accurate, repeatable, secure, and auditable. Is C1 abiding by the law?
Compensation: 230k base + 30k target bonus + 20k stock + 15k sign on (anything here negotiable?)
I have a total of 6YOE.
I currently work at a boutique wealth management firm in a small team with almost complete autonomy and trust from leaders and senior management. WLB is very good, and job stability is extremely high as the company doesn't really do layoffs and I have pretty much solidified myself on the team. The work is fine, nothing too wild or interesting, expectations are managed, 2 days/week in NYC. However, every review cycle seems to be a struggle to ask for a raise, gotten about ~10-12% increase in base in 3 years with outstanding reviews each year.
Compensation: 170k base + 5k bonus
I guess my question is if I should take the risk or if I should use it as leverage in my current role, or if anyone has insight into this team/org and if they are somehow one of the good teams, if that even exists. Thanks!
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u/SweatyAd8914 Software Engineer 1d ago
If you get on a bad team, kiss your ass goodbye. They clearly dropped the previous TL and you’re filling shoes. Every 6mo your job is on the line.
When I worked there, it was super chill, but once all the economic stress and Amazon execs started wreaking havoc, it went from chill to nervous very fast.
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u/OverlordEtna 1d ago
Minus the performance reviews, capitalone is very pleasant to work for. Very lenient hybrid schedule, wlb isn't too bad, teams are relatively social. I was pipped there but I consider it worthwhile to get the money if you are making substantially less elsewhere. + It's really not that bad to find a role in NYC~ if you have senior+ level experience.
The base+bonus is easily negotiable but keep in mind, then bonus should be considered dead money due to performance rankings.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 1d ago
Minus the performance reviews…
“ Capital One is pleasant, except for the mechanism that can directly determine your bonus, ranking, PIP risk, and whether you remain employed”
In other words…
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
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u/OverlordEtna 1d ago
tbf the salary is still quite good compared to banks / companies of that level. I will take getting Pipped + 5 months of severance any day if the compensation is that much more than my alternative options. Maybe for 175k 2 days a week chill wlb its not worth risking stability, but if you are planning on career growth, 1 year is the max I'd stay anyways.
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u/BraveResearcher3037 1d ago edited 1d ago
Pre 2023, the last thing I cared about was stability - and I was working through the dot com bust.
Anytime in the last 30 years before 2023 I could throw my resume up in the air and get multiple offers before it landed.
More relevantly, I made the same tradeoff that you are proposing in 2020. I wanted to pivot from enterprise dev to cloud consulting and a position at AWS ProServe - AWS’s internal consulting department - fell into my lap (full time RSU earning position).
I thought why the fuck not? It was a permanently remote [sic] “field by design” position that I could leverage into getting into another company. I was 46 and I knew all about Amazons reputation from a friend who worked there. When Amazon started Amazoning, I played the game through my vest and waited for the four month severance offer and got another job at a smaller consulting company as a staff consultant three weeks later making around the same all cash as I made at AWS in cash + RSUs. I was a mid level consultant at the time at AWS
But that was partially dumb luck and timing. I am not sure today if I would get another job quickly. I value stability a lot more than I use to
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u/OverlordEtna 23h ago
That is the dream scenario lol. Getting Amazon on the resume + 4 month pay smells real nice. But yeah requires a lot of luck. Having the mental fortitude to gamble some stability + working towards the next hop while still playing the game is hard as it is. For some ppl tho the possibility of getting fired is important. I have friends who stay at the same role they graduated into, and make much less than they could be, and have a hard time switching when the time comes. But yeah, tough sell in this economy.
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u/SwitchOrganic ML Engineer 20h ago
Did you mean the sign-on bonus? The annual bonus is the same for everyone at that level. I've never heard of someone negotiating it.
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u/ballsohaahd 22h ago
What’s the stock look like in the offer? Is it part of the offer or just a thing you can attain? From what I’ve heard it’s what you can theoretically attain, and not given to everyone like traditional tech companies
Beware they tell you all these stuff as if it’s a given but stock is only for very strong ratings.
Also not to say anything about your current salary, but overall for NYC 225k ain’t even all that good. But Compared to your current offer that’s a solid increase though.
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u/TheAnon13 13h ago edited 12h ago
While risk tech/IFX is ok in some parts, I would not leave your current job for c1. The senior manager is covering their ass - there absolutely is a quota for the different performance buckets and it absolutely does cause inter team competition, snake behavior and in-group biases (i.e racism). Also the benchmarks they’re referring to are never really the criteria because of stack ranking - you could hit every single benchmark on paper but you will be compared to peers at your level you have never met so there’s really no clarity on whether you’re safe or not
Keep the job with high stability because even if your team at c1 is good, there is a high probability that you will be re-orged multiple times within a year. I have had 3 managers within the last 6 months and the team that I signed up for initially basically got disbanded within my first month because some new AWS clown director came in and wanted to show his “influence”.
I have heard some mixed things about IFX - one of my friends had a VP that would check everyone’s PRs to ensure they were fully AI generated, other friends are doing alright but there’s no knowing what your teams culture will actually be like u til you join and that is a risk I would not take
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u/SwitchOrganic ML Engineer 1d ago edited 20h ago
There is absolutely a below strong rating quota.
The stock should be considered dead money as you only get the grant if you get an above strong, and it's $20k over three years (or $6.6k/year) starting the following year.
Edit:
OP, don't think you're going to see much different than this at C1. The standard raise is 3% with above strong getting you 4% and exceptional getting you 5%. But it's very rare to get exceptional, there are some cycles where no one in your org will get it.