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Funny to think that as well as tech companies trying to give out credit cards, a few financial companies (Capital One) are now seeing themselves and identifying

by 45756e 6y ago

Funny to think that as well as tech companies trying to give out credit cards, a few financial companies (Capital One) are now seeing themselves and identifying as tech companies. Although based on the article, it doesn't seem like the latter is really related to the former.

908B64B197 6y ago
> a few financial companies (Capital One) are now seeing themselves and identifying as tech companies. Is it branding or an actual shift? I've seen many companies pivot to being "tech companies" but still didn't have incentives in place to attract real talent, and more crucially that still treated software and tech as a cost center. But hey they had bean bags!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- milkytron 6y ago
  Having worked for banks that have said this, I can say it's branding without much substance behind it. They say this to attract talent. The talent doesn't remain long unless they get into all the politics and butt sniffing that goes on at large established companies. Those that actually produce end up being taken advantage of and credit goes towards the people that manage them.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    It's what I observed with banks. No matter how much the tech contributes to the bottom line, bonus and incentives are still focused on the trading floor and salespeople.
- 1MachineElf 6y ago
  Before their infamous AWS breach, a former coworker of mine tried to get me hired there under a fancy cyber security operations title. He gave me a tour of the new(ish) building around Tysons Corner, VA. It is a very modern building, with a lot of charging stations and Tesla model S EVs in the parking garage. Public events happen there, they have two cafeterias, and probably a whole bunch of networks supporting all of that. They constantly evaluate new cyber tools, so I was told. It seemed to me that, yes, there could be something behind this idea that they are "a tech company." So I went through the hiring process. There's an online proprietary aptitude test that's required of all candidates, and it's apparently such a big deal, that you can only take it once per 6 months. They start you off with a practice test served from a non-CapitalOne FQDN, then the real one served from a CapitalOne FQDN. Well, I took both, and got an error at the end of the real one. Apparently, Firefox is explicitly supported on the practice test, but only IE11 is supported on the real one. The error meant none of my exam results were recorded, and due to some technicality, that meant I was SOL for 6 months. My experience with CapitalOne, the "tech company" whose aptitude exam required a legacy browser, ended right there.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    > So I went through the hiring process. There's an online proprietary aptitude test that's required of all candidates, and it's apparently such a big deal, that you can only take it once per 6 months. Is it at least a technical test? "Aptitudes and psychometric tests" are, to me, a red flag at tech companies, that it's HR and not engineering that's in charge of hiring.
ponker 6y ago
Capital One has always been a tech / big data powered company.

by 45756e 6y ago

908B64B197 6y ago

> a few financial companies (Capital One) are now seeing themselves and identifying as tech companies. Is it branding or an actual shift? I've seen many companies pivot to being "tech companies" but still didn't have incentives in place to attract real talent, and more crucially that still treated software and tech as a cost center. But hey they had bean bags!

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
milkytron 6y ago
Having worked for banks that have said this, I can say it's branding without much substance behind it. They say this to attract talent. The talent doesn't remain long unless they get into all the politics and butt sniffing that goes on at large established companies. Those that actually produce end up being taken advantage of and credit goes towards the people that manage them.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  It's what I observed with banks. No matter how much the tech contributes to the bottom line, bonus and incentives are still focused on the trading floor and salespeople.
1MachineElf 6y ago
Before their infamous AWS breach, a former coworker of mine tried to get me hired there under a fancy cyber security operations title. He gave me a tour of the new(ish) building around Tysons Corner, VA. It is a very modern building, with a lot of charging stations and Tesla model S EVs in the parking garage. Public events happen there, they have two cafeterias, and probably a whole bunch of networks supporting all of that. They constantly evaluate new cyber tools, so I was told. It seemed to me that, yes, there could be something behind this idea that they are "a tech company." So I went through the hiring process. There's an online proprietary aptitude test that's required of all candidates, and it's apparently such a big deal, that you can only take it once per 6 months. They start you off with a practice test served from a non-CapitalOne FQDN, then the real one served from a CapitalOne FQDN. Well, I took both, and got an error at the end of the real one. Apparently, Firefox is explicitly supported on the practice test, but only IE11 is supported on the real one. The error meant none of my exam results were recorded, and due to some technicality, that meant I was SOL for 6 months. My experience with CapitalOne, the "tech company" whose aptitude exam required a legacy browser, ended right there.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > So I went through the hiring process. There's an online proprietary aptitude test that's required of all candidates, and it's apparently such a big deal, that you can only take it once per 6 months. Is it at least a technical test? "Aptitudes and psychometric tests" are, to me, a red flag at tech companies, that it's HR and not engineering that's in charge of hiring.

ponker 6y ago

Capital One has always been a tech / big data powered company.