Company: IBM
Date: 2012-02-28
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

The Rochester COE is a Black Hole.
Pros: 1.  Benefits - pretty decent, health and dental insurance you can get for free if you sign up for the basic plan.  401k match is up to 6% after you've been there 1 year.

2.  Flexibility -  Depending on how lenient your manager is (mine was) you can work from home if you're sick or out of town without taking any PTO.

3.  Co-workers -  Basically all of the FA's are 20-somethings, so you'll be able to work alongside some good people.  Then you can all go to lunch and talk about how stupid your job is.  True story.  Happened a lot.

4.  Good resume builder

5.  Ping-pong.
Cons: 1.  Compensation - Starting salary is 40k with a sign-on bonus of $1,500..  Not bad for a recent college grad just starting out, I'll admit.  But don't expect to see a raise any time soon.  Or a bonus.  You'll likely see that same paycheck twice a month for years to come.

2.  On-the-Job Training - This was how I figured out IBM was a joke within the first couple weeks.  My previous manager told me on the first day, "you'll think we've never trained somebody in before."  He was right.  Although they offer training classes, these are basically a formality for all new hires.  These sad excuses for classes won't actually help you do your job.  The person I shared an office with basically taught me everything.

3.  Job Satisfaction - I worked some not-so-fun jobs through college.  I sold shoes, did janitorial work, cleaned horse stalls.  Even at $8-10 an hour, these jobs were still more enjoyable than being a Financial Analyst at IBM. 

4.  Cost-Cutting - This is my biggest problem with IBM as a company.  IBM actually just laid off about 1,200 employees from their US workforce in the week I wrote this review.  Some from the Rochester plant were included in this.  If you're thinking about starting a career at IBM by taking a financial analyst job, consider this:  From 2007 to 2011, the US IBM workforce has shrunk from 135,000 down to 98,000 employees.  They have been shipping these jobs overseas and will continue to do so because the labor is simply cheaper over there.  IBM could care less about their employees.  It's all about making the shareholders money, even if it means canning people that have been with the company for almost 30 years.

5.  Work-Loads - Although some of the work is being shipped overseas, a lot of this work is just being piled on to current employees' workloads.  Now I understand that the longer you stay with a company the more work you'll have to do, that's a given.  But along with that usually comes a pay increase.  As a Financial Analyst I guarantee you will be given more, and more, and more mind-numbing work to do.  And to thank you for your efforts, IBM will let you use their bathrooms.  Sweet deal, right?

This job does provide good finance experience for a recent college grad, but that's about it..  This isn't the place to build a career.  In my opinion, the entire COE will be shipped overseas in the next 5-10 years.