Company: IBM
Date: 2013-02-09
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Consulting practice at GBS is a terrible place to be if you are an experienced hire
Pros: Good connections/exposure at the C level in large corporations
Opportunity for travel based on available assignments
Cons: There is tremendous pressure on sales team to meet quotas - so consulting engagements are always over sold and over promised.
Once the contract is signed the sales team moves on to sell the next engagement.  The sales teams incentives seem to be based on sales numbers and not on project delivery or profitablity.  The delivery team instead is measured on client satisfaction and profitability, making it very challenging in all oversold assignments.
This over promising of assignments together with a team that is mostly average or mediocre performers puts a lot of pressure on experienced hires to deliver - thus most client engagements end up being 60 to 80 hours a week including weekend work to meet the client expectations.
The available technical talent at GBS is made up of a limited number of star performers and a large majority of average or mediocre performers.  Most GBS projects have an abundance of contract employees from other staff augmentation firms.  There is no control on the quality or delivery of these contract consultants.  GBS Partners are ok with this arrangement as long as there is a mark up that is being made from the contract employees.
A very small percentage of star performers stay back to attempt at promotions, a large majority just move on after getting burnt out in a couple of years.