I can confirm that all the cons provided by others are 100% true, but let me start from the top...
Leadership - every now and then, leadership would speak about how they are forming the future of finance. They would literally spend serious cash (parties, videos, campaign) playing mental gymnastics and trying to convince consultants that Capco is so far ahead of the innovation curve and an absolute industry leader in the financial services sector. Since we were part of the organization and had vested our careers in its leadership, we tend to become delusional on that regard. On top of that, there is no transparency on how they rate their employees. There is an out of date process for performance review and no one actually took it seriously.
Projects - the official definition of changesouring is: absorbing part of a bank, convert the department into Capco consultants, and receive contracts from the bank doing the exact same thing. The problem is, these work that the banks were performing, they were the most unwanted kind, hence zero value added and career killer. Capco would repackage their very own employees to their clients as staff aug, but since no one trusts the "Capco Consultants", the IT side of the bank would give Capco the absolute worst kind of IT jobs, such as, testing - the kind that other organizations outsources to India or Latin America.
Engagement partners- when a consulting firm sells a project, there's a SOW and a clear objective of what to achieve, be it standing up a platform or transforming a business. That’s how things work in the consulting world. In Capco, the partner's objective is to provide unqualified bodies at a below market rate and let the clients figure out what to do with them. Since the banks are getting "FS consultants" at a dirt cheap rate (compare to other consulting firms) and no commitment of employments, they are more than happy to take on these contracts. It saves them a lot of cash in a long run. Think outsourcing - but locally. Hence, changesourcing!! The partners - they don't care. Contracts are signed, moving on to the next client. They do, however, spend some effort into branding and creating optics that they were directly competing with Accenture, IBM, or Big 4.
Learning and Training / HR - all the cons written about learning and training is 100% true, especially the quality of the HR department. However, I do highly recommend people joining the Capco HR department. The career path is super aggressive since you are closer to partners and best of all, you don’t do anything 7 days a week, 365 days a year!! The fact that they have pre-determined/robotic response to different types of negative Glassdoor feedback tells you how genuine they are.
Culture – the consensus #1 aspect that all “Capconites” are truly proud of. It’s true, at one point I was proud of what they stood for in innovations and technologies. Looking back, I can’t stress how delusional that was. Delusional is truly the right and only word to use because when you are an employee constantly staring a propaganda emails (see above on leadership), your emotion runs high on their beliefs and mentality. All the campaigns about digitalization, crowd funding, humanistic, disruptive, beyourseflatwork, etc. They really get into your head. By injecting these jargons into their employees, they create this culture of exclusiveness where everyone thinks he/she is starting a revolution like in Les Miserable – creating that “either you are in or you are out” mentality. The truth is, since every consultant is doing pointless project work (refer to projects) and spends his/her 9-5 working on “contributions” that gets them promoted, everyone is brainwashed to believe that Capco has most radically innovative minds in the world. Try criticizing or commenting on their propaganda, their culture would organically phase you out. In a way it’s brilliant by their leadership to keep the morale high!
People / Hiring – If you don’t stutter and look grateful, you are hired. At one point, because they need to fulfill a staffing requirement for a client, they literally were sending out offer letters to everyone who applies. I actually did recruiting for them as my “contribution” and I was told that we HAVE to “hire at least 3/5 from the group…but don’t lower your standard…but pick 3”. I almost got into a fist fight on how none of them qualified and they ended up hiring 4.
