Company: IBM
Date: 2015-05-22
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

IBM Research
Pros: The allocation of people to "project" is the best I have seen anywhere, and certainly much better than Google's "throw a lot of PhD-wielding mathematicians at that Javascript framework and it will thrive". Very rarely, I think that someone would be a better fit for another project or that the project would be better served by someone else. That includes myself.

This is to a large part due to the fact that many levels of management above you will have a PhD in maths (or whichever you do) and will understand what you are good at. You don't have to worry about the head of school being "into something else".

Most colleagues are great professionals. In most universities, you would struggle to find the depth and breadth. Most colleagues are also very nice.

Especially if you have a good manager, who can get good clients to pay for IP you produce, you can spend a couple of months a year on some "client engagement" and the rest working on vaguely related research you like.
Cons: IBM Research may feel like a university, but it's a commercial company. When a rumour goes around that IBM will fire 100,000 people, it may be a rumour -- or it may not. There is no guarantee that they will not fire 100,000 people, you included.