Essentially it sounds like Capital One is taking some of their internal tooling and starting to sell it, starting with their tooling for managing Snowflake instances.
I see they’ve already mastered the enterprise software technique of a “screen-by-screen video” that shows zero actual screens of the actual product, just a series of animations vaguely indicating business processes that are efficient & scale & managed etc.
I've been out of consulting for 7 years now, so I don't know how widespread or old the trend is, but I'm seeing a lot of banks moving to a product operating model for their internal/backend software. The last place I worked had been at it for a couple of years and there were a few teams that really ran with it. At some point why not turn them into a profit center?
Snowflake, in my circles, means something that's outside of the patterns in use and doesn't scale. It's something that's inherently bad and you want as little of it as possible, preferably make it visible and obvious, and manage it outside of your regular repositories and pipelines. Keep bringing it up at retros and planning until it's either industrialised along with the other things you support, or you drop/refactor/hand over.
Well… I read it. And I’ve gotta say, that sounds like a blatant violation of Regulation Y, the requirement that bank holding companies engage only in, “The business of banking.” There are lots and lots of activities that fall under that umbrella, but enterprise B2B software sales isn’t one of them.
CapOne may be too big to fail, but it’s not too big to receive a C
>> “ Regulation Y also describes transactions for which bank holding companies must seek and receive the Federal Reserve’s approval.”
My reading of Reg Y is if Capital One got approval from the Fed, it’s fine for them as a bank holding company to engage in a nonbanking activity. Am I missing something?
Capital One Bank (USA) N.A. — Currently offers a wide variety of credit card products, other lending products, and deposit products.
Capital One, N.A. — Offers a broad spectrum of banking products and financial services to consumers, small businesses, and commercial clients, including traditional banking products through an extensive branch network in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Virginia.
Capital One Auto Finance, Inc. — Offers automobile financing products.
The hacker, Paige A. Thompson a/k/a/ erratic, was a former AWS engineer who abused her access to download the CapitalOne data along with 30 other companies data. Insider attacks are so deadly.
On top of her having insider access, she is mentally ill (hence her fitting online moniker) so that doesn't help any. She was long known about in the hacking scene before the hack. Very aggressive and rude online behavior.
She got convicted recently and her sentencing is in September, looking at 20 years. I think she'll get that. Hopefully she doesn't follow through on her previous statements of wanting to attempt suicide or fleeing the country.
Surprising that a bank is going in this direction but not surprising that it was Capital One. They have historically been pretty technology forward in comparison to other US banks. They are one of the only US banks that provide pretty pain-free APIs to the public.
Don’t let the marketing budget fool you. They’re a subprime lender wrapped in the veneer of a fintech while being a closeted sweatshop. A large proportion of their engineering team used to be H1Bs about 5-7 years ago, unsure if that’s still the case with quotas shrinking recently.
Having used to work at Capital One within Shared Tech, I worked with a lot of really brilliant engineers who could easily have been working at FAANG. That being said, they didn't pay as well as FAANG so a lot of us moved on.
I'm not surprised at all by this move, there's a lot of solutions at Capital One that can be monetized. The company is so large that there's redundant solutions concurrently developed by different teams, inevitably someone was going to work the bureaucracy to start selling SaaS
> Having used to work at Capital One within Shared Tech, I worked with a lot of really brilliant engineers who could easily have been working at FAANG.
I don't doubt this - but my guess is that a lot of these top engineers are working at CapitalOne for relatively low salaries compared to FAANG explicitly because they're tethered to the company by an H1B or L1 or similar visa and can't easily jump ship.
The headquarters of Capital One is smack-dab in the middle of the US defense and IC contracting hub in Tysons Corner in Northern Virginia. They're competing for talent now with hundreds (thousands?) of small software contractors and also the big defense players like Northrop, Lockheed, etc. And on top of that, the big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft have expanded heavily in the area and are now gobbling up all the talent as they pay way more than DOD and gov't contract work.
Yet Capital One still doesn't offer competitive salaries that even match the defense contractors, never-mind AWS and Microsoft. I know half a dozen talented engineers who got tired of the $175K defense industry salary "ceiling" and jump ship to Amazon. I know of zero who've moved to Capital One, though they probably employ more engineers in the area than any other company.
And from what I've seen, it's because their engineering departments are 90% Indians on H1B (again - some very talented). Most US citizens won't want to work there.
This makes me want to get rid of my Capital One card. I knew they'd wasted millions on a giant engineering department that does jack for their business (worked with many of their ex-engs), and this is proof that they never had anything useful to do. CTO must be trying to save his bonus by making up a new irrelevant business to justify their unnecessarily large engineering org and lack of purpose.
This is sometimes hot and cold sometimes depending on C.I/T/D.O decisions. I used to work for enterprises that said software is eating the world and revenue , insourcing and IP differentiation.
Come next CXO cycle , we are a manufacturing company / Fintech / Insurer and IT is left to the specialists (and sell off entire arms or rebadge).
Aside , no two warehouses may be alike (fragmentation) + the fact that specialized products that keep adding new features find it hard in the data lineage space / governance space. I doubt if this steam will keep up unless there is a significant revenue (and that will be a challenge for anyone who would make a decision on a SaaS product)
I work in the enterprise/b2b bank software and consulting market. Nothing seen here appears to have any impact on our business or customers. Not quite sure who this is oriented at.
If you are so big you can spend time arguing with capital one about your IT workloads, you may consider doing it in house or working with a smaller partner like ourselves who exclusively focuses on the software part. When you don’t have to worry about running a bank, you can get a lot of other work done. It’s also a shitload easier to operate outside of the regulatory domain you would otherwise be trapped in.
No other company wastes nearly as much money on AWS routinely than Capital One. Entire Kubernetes clusters for microservices that do essentially nothing.
Back End Software Engineer - Capital One Software (Remote Eligible)
What You’ll Do:
- Collaborate with and across Agile teams to design, develop, test, implement, and support technical solutions in full-stack development tools and technologies
- Share your passion for staying on top of tech trends, experimenting with and learning new technologies, participating in internal & external technology communities, mentoring other members of the engineering community
- Collaborate with digital product managers, and deliver robust cloud-based solutions that drive powerful experiences to help millions of Americans achieve financial empowerment
- Utilize programming languages like Java, Python, SQL, Node, Go, and Scala, Open Source RDBMS and NoSQL databases, Container Orchestration services including Docker and Kubernetes, and a variety of AWS tools and services
Basic Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s Degree
- At least 3 years of professional software engineering experience (Internship experience does not apply)
Preferred Qualifications:
- 4+ years of experience in at least one of the following: Lua, C++, Angular, Java, Python, GoLang, Nginx, Scala, Go, Rust or Node.js
- 1+ years of experience with AWS, GCP, Azure, or another cloud service
- 2+ years of experience in open source frameworks
[+] [-] cj|3 years ago|reply
And a link to the first product they launched, “Slingshot”: https://www.capitalone.com/software/solutions/
Essentially it sounds like Capital One is taking some of their internal tooling and starting to sell it, starting with their tooling for managing Snowflake instances.
[+] [-] aaronharnly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcims|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cassianoleal|3 years ago|reply
Terrible name for a product!
[+] [-] kochbeck|3 years ago|reply
CapOne may be too big to fail, but it’s not too big to receive a C
[+] [-] O__________O|3 years ago|reply
My reading of Reg Y is if Capital One got approval from the Fed, it’s fine for them as a bank holding company to engage in a nonbanking activity. Am I missing something?
___________
Source:
https://www.frbsf.org/banking/regulation/regulations-policie...
[+] [-] orangepurple|3 years ago|reply
Capital One Bank (USA) N.A. — Currently offers a wide variety of credit card products, other lending products, and deposit products.
Capital One, N.A. — Offers a broad spectrum of banking products and financial services to consumers, small businesses, and commercial clients, including traditional banking products through an extensive branch network in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Virginia.
Capital One Auto Finance, Inc. — Offers automobile financing products.
Capital One, N.A., Member FDIC
Capital One, National Association
Capital One Bank
Capital One Bank, N.A.
Capital One Bank, National Association
Capital One Bank (USA)
Capital One Financial Corporation
Capital One Home Loans LLC
Capital One Services, LLC
Capital One Settlement Services, LLC
[+] [-] eyphka|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wrayjustin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] temuze|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m4jor|3 years ago|reply
On top of her having insider access, she is mentally ill (hence her fitting online moniker) so that doesn't help any. She was long known about in the hacking scene before the hack. Very aggressive and rude online behavior.
She got convicted recently and her sentencing is in September, looking at 20 years. I think she'll get that. Hopefully she doesn't follow through on her previous statements of wanting to attempt suicide or fleeing the country.
[+] [-] BMc2020|3 years ago|reply
What's in your wallet? All the money you saved.
[+] [-] nojito|3 years ago|reply
If they could they almost certainly would have tether bought an off the shelf software.
[+] [-] PaulsWallet|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|3 years ago|reply
https://newrepublic.com/article/155212/worked-capital-one-fi...
[+] [-] hackily|3 years ago|reply
I'm not surprised at all by this move, there's a lot of solutions at Capital One that can be monetized. The company is so large that there's redundant solutions concurrently developed by different teams, inevitably someone was going to work the bureaucracy to start selling SaaS
[+] [-] hiram112|3 years ago|reply
I don't doubt this - but my guess is that a lot of these top engineers are working at CapitalOne for relatively low salaries compared to FAANG explicitly because they're tethered to the company by an H1B or L1 or similar visa and can't easily jump ship.
The headquarters of Capital One is smack-dab in the middle of the US defense and IC contracting hub in Tysons Corner in Northern Virginia. They're competing for talent now with hundreds (thousands?) of small software contractors and also the big defense players like Northrop, Lockheed, etc. And on top of that, the big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft have expanded heavily in the area and are now gobbling up all the talent as they pay way more than DOD and gov't contract work.
Yet Capital One still doesn't offer competitive salaries that even match the defense contractors, never-mind AWS and Microsoft. I know half a dozen talented engineers who got tired of the $175K defense industry salary "ceiling" and jump ship to Amazon. I know of zero who've moved to Capital One, though they probably employ more engineers in the area than any other company.
And from what I've seen, it's because their engineering departments are 90% Indians on H1B (again - some very talented). Most US citizens won't want to work there.
[+] [-] olliej|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway787544|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syspec|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cocoland2|3 years ago|reply
Aside , no two warehouses may be alike (fragmentation) + the fact that specialized products that keep adding new features find it hard in the data lineage space / governance space. I doubt if this steam will keep up unless there is a significant revenue (and that will be a challenge for anyone who would make a decision on a SaaS product)
[+] [-] bob1029|3 years ago|reply
If you are so big you can spend time arguing with capital one about your IT workloads, you may consider doing it in house or working with a smaller partner like ourselves who exclusively focuses on the software part. When you don’t have to worry about running a bank, you can get a lot of other work done. It’s also a shitload easier to operate outside of the regulatory domain you would otherwise be trapped in.
[+] [-] trillic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Victerius|3 years ago|reply
And here is one of their job postings: https://www.capitalonecareers.com/job/vienna/back-end-softwa...
Back End Software Engineer - Capital One Software (Remote Eligible)
What You’ll Do:
- Collaborate with and across Agile teams to design, develop, test, implement, and support technical solutions in full-stack development tools and technologies
- Share your passion for staying on top of tech trends, experimenting with and learning new technologies, participating in internal & external technology communities, mentoring other members of the engineering community
- Collaborate with digital product managers, and deliver robust cloud-based solutions that drive powerful experiences to help millions of Americans achieve financial empowerment
- Utilize programming languages like Java, Python, SQL, Node, Go, and Scala, Open Source RDBMS and NoSQL databases, Container Orchestration services including Docker and Kubernetes, and a variety of AWS tools and services
Basic Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s Degree
- At least 3 years of professional software engineering experience (Internship experience does not apply)
Preferred Qualifications:
- 4+ years of experience in at least one of the following: Lua, C++, Angular, Java, Python, GoLang, Nginx, Scala, Go, Rust or Node.js
- 1+ years of experience with AWS, GCP, Azure, or another cloud service
- 2+ years of experience in open source frameworks
- 3+ years of experience in Agile practices
[+] [-] keepquestioning|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spullara|3 years ago|reply
https://github.com/goldmansachs
[+] [-] heyflyguy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeusk|3 years ago|reply
Whatever that measure indicates of product quality ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] htrp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnsgbdfjfgh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawaymanbot|3 years ago|reply
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