Company: IBM
Date: 2010-06-18
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

IBM. It's Better Manually. Yes, indeed.
Pros: Allows to learn about the inner workings of a giant corporation. The technical side is of definite interest. Due to it's size, its employee base is akin to a society in itself, with all types of psychological profiles to be assess, probed, appreciated, or less appreciated sometimes.
Cons: * Company is kneeling besides its former glorious shadow. A company that sustains itself by playing with its portfolio, merging with successful enterprises, is definitely not in line with the innovative spirit that one usually associates with such a glamorous brand name.
* Does not understand the basic principle of an innovative and efficient company: the employees are the best assets.
* Uses its former reputation to easily acquire (or should one say "trap") any type of HR, in order to under-utilize their skill-sets.
* Baseline employees are tools to be used and dumped when broken.
* Creativity is stifled by political bickering. Enough said.
* Note that ways of stifling creativity are actually considered as being "better business practices" among employees, and presented as such in high management meetings.
* An "afraid of change" mentality.
* Bureaucracy paperwork pervades every single little action that one attempts to take.
* Short-term fulfillment over long-term investment.
* Hefty pyramidal hierarchical construct. Layers and layers of management ensure that ideas from the baseline are drowned in the political glue.
* Excessive human division between those who are supposed to work in the same company.
* No ROI for innovation. Used to have some, but not anymore.
* Employee benefits are cut without warning, with the recession as an easy excuse.
* Meager opportunity for career advancement, unless one is ready to play the political game.
* Meaningless overwork caused by incredibly poor HR practices.
* It's better manually. Literally.
* Being a suck up is rewarded, to stand one's ground is punished.
* Employee morale is at an all-time low.


Overall, the big blue ship is sinking. Here is Nostradamus' pickle of the day: "in a very short time frame, the most innovative minds will tend to swim away from it as fast as possible, to avoid being sucked in the oblivion of meaninglessness".