Company: IBM
Date: 2017-07-23
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Pays well but the prospects are poor
Pros: Pays well.  IBM seems to pay above average for the market we are in.  While this is nice coming in the door it makes it difficult when looking for an exit strategy.
Cons: Little to no support for long term planning.  Everything is focused on the stock price, There is no apparent long term planning.  IBM buys smaller companies, does minimal effort to merge the newly acquired products with others before selling to their customers and squeezing every last dollar out.  With little or no support the flow of dollars is eventually reduced, the product sold to another company and the process starts again.  IBM does not innovate.  Has lost mind share as it has no products targeted toward the consumer market and newer purchasing managers have never heard of them.  

Finally, the skills developed at IBM are IBM centric.  While they will sometimes contribute to open source they don't sell it to customers.  Learning how to do things the IBM way is not transferable to other companies and in most cases will make you a skills dinosaur in a few years.