(Actual Employee Here) Capco Is a Great Company to Work For But It Takes Effort
Pros
Firstly, Glassdoor is like Yelp and you tend to only get most extreme (mostly negative) reviews. I actually have had a great experience working here so wanted to share that perspective as well. The people at Capco are fantastic. I’ve worked with hundreds of Capco employees across different offices and projects and I am still impressed at the high quality of each individual person and the degree to which they pass the most important interpersonal test in consulting: "Would I want to be locked in a client conference room on a demanding project with this person for six months?" With respect to factors like enjoying the people you work with, their aptitude & capability, their character & doing the right thing, it amazes me how such a high concentration of talented people make it to one place. Consulting is a people business and Capco have gotten the "people" thing right. People who do well at Capco tend to succeed to the degree that they put effort into building a strong and wide internal network. This can happen through a combination of intentional/persistent outreach to senior leadership, being genuinely interested in others, helping others in their work, and creating a positive reputation by doing excellent work for clients & letting client feedback to senior managers speak for you. Culturally, this actually tends to be a pretty good incentive structure because it creates a positive feedback loop which is continually motivating you to genuinely connect with others and to do great project work. If it's not genuine, it tends to show over time. Starting from my first week when I walked up to Lance at a town hall and had a great conversation, I’ve found most everyone in leadership not only accessible but happy to connect and get to know you. They may not always be able to drop everything and have a chat in the moment but, over time, at key points in my career and my personal life, senior managers have gone to bat for me to support me and help me progress. Capco has a "be yourself at work" culture, meaning that I can bring my whole self to the workplace every day, and I can see from their actions that senior leaders are laser focused on DE&I initiatives to expand the supportiveness of the workplace even further. In nearly 4 years here, my experience at Capco has challenged me to grow across a full spectrum of interpersonal, client, product/industry, technology, and personal/team management skills as well as encouraged me to seek out opportunities to serve the communities around me. So far, it’s been a pretty rewarding few years. I can look back and see huge ways I’ve grown as a person thanks to the ways I’ve been challenged. Overall, if you’re willing to put in the effort, I believe you’ll experience a similarly rewarding journey.
Cons
Many people who join Capco and don’t like it tend to either not build a network or they have an idiosyncratic negative experience with a specific project early on. Consulting, and by extension Capco, Is not for everyone and, without a network, it can be quite challenging to know what opportunities are out there. One part of the nature of consulting is that you take the good with the bad. Sometimes you get stuck on a project that you really don’t enjoy and it could be for longer than you hoped. When this happens, many assume that this is just what all of consulting/Capco is like and they choose to leave. Over time, I’ve found the work tends to build on itself and you learn to manage the work better but that still doesn’t stop you from sometimes doing a project that you don’t like or even working with an unpleasant client. Luckily, nothing lasts forever and most of the time you can create another opportunity for yourself. That said, if you are looking for a place you can just sit back and climb through the ranks by tenure, Capco is not the place for you. There is a tremendous amount of opportunity to do well at Capco but the “meritocracy” they talk about means that no one is going to create it for you. It’s there for the taking but you have to go out and create it. The performance review process is intense and, while very fair, it’s also thorough, meaning that you’ll be compared with your peers, many of whom are very high achieving. Promotions can be difficult to earn and you really need to be doing exceptionally well in all performance areas to get one. It’s not a place you can have a complacent career which means the pace required to be “always on” and always doing well in each area can sometimes be exhausting. This is one of the main drivers of high turnover in consulting.