Company: IBM
Date: 2014-04-05
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Confirmed

They are far from the company that they once were
Pros: Very good in most areas about working from home, work/life balance, 401k contributions (match dollar for dollar to 6%).
Cons: No education.  IBM was once a company that would give you education and skills to help your existing career and help further your career.  No more.  They don't even give you education to help you be more efficient on the technology that you work on today.  Even the CEO (Ginny) recognized this, and required that ALL employees get a minimum of 40 hours education a year.  The only problem is that like everything else in IBM, it is not taken seriously and it is just simply a numbers game.  You can document CONFERENCE CALLS toward your 40 hours of education.  It is a TOTAL JOKE.

Yearly reviews are called "PERSONAL Business Commitments".  Don't let the name fool you.  There is NOTHING personal about them.  You write your own commitments every year, and then you are rated against people that are NOT EVEN YOUR PEERS!  They say that they rate you against peers, but you know that isn't possible, when nobody does what you do.  System is very unfair.  It should be called GROUP Business Commitments, and your manager should write your goals, and all of your "peers" should have the same goals to work toward.  That way, it would be at least fair.

Sadly, layoffs are part of the IBM culture, and are not a rare event.  Expect layoffs AT LEAST twice a year every year.  This is very demoralizing, and causes the environment to be unproductive.

Lastly, while the amount that they match on the 401k is very nice, there is a big problem.  They no longer put their share of the money into your 401k each pay period.  What they do is put that money aside, then on December 15th they make one lump sum contribution totaling what they would have put into your account each pay period.  The problem is that while they hold your money, it isn't working for you.  The other problem is that if you leave the company for any reason (fired, quit, laid off) prior to December 1st (I believe is the date), you get NONE of that money they put aside for you.  So even if you worked 10 months, you don't get any contribution for them for the entire 10 months that you worked.

This company is not the company it once was, and it REALLY is a shame, since they were one of the best.