Company: IBM
Date: 2017-05-31
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

IBM design is nothing more than lumpy mashed potatoes
Pros: There are many smart people that work here. The designers can really push themselves on challenging domains and products.
Cons: Every business organization is inconsistent on everything. There are many that follow IBM design thinking and others that don’t. Teams struggle to releases any product or any type of software. Which leads to a lot of designers hopping to new teams to find something better. I have seen design teams cut and the project moved to development (great way for a company being “design focus”).
 
I will only speak to what team I was on. The management is all over the place. My team went through three design leads in less than a year and a half. Our Program Director didn’t know how to deal with any of the problems in our business platform/team so they would just move people around never addressing the problem.
 
You could see how overwhelmed and inexperienced some of the design leads were. One in general couldn’t lead the team and placed most of the responsibility on other team members. If you didn’t meet demands we were blamed for failure or even an ultimatum to stay or move teams. When asked what they did they would respond with “going to meetings.” With little to no directions, you scrounged for work. If you didn’t know what you should be doing or asked what you could do you got nothing more than “You should know.”
 
There were no check-ins and the design lead assumed you were taking advantage of them. There are goals and performance system but the lead didn’t effectively use or acknowledge it until it was too late for the designer. Most of the designers left the team for new teams and some tried to stick it out in hope it would get better. Program Director should have intervened but never solved the problem but switched old designers with industry designers (A few months later everyone was moved off and development are performing design).
 
The culture at IBM design can be summed up as everyone's out for themselves and less than teams. It is my observation employees work in secret not sharing their work. If you didn’t have a loud voice or opinions, you were cut down or see as weak. How do you grow at IBM? It’s hard with a culture where you are viewed as weak. Then you are pushed out.