Company: IBM
Date: 2015-08-24
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Great company spoiled by incompetent management
Pros: I have been with IBM India as a marketing associate for the last 4 years and what I have found to be good about the company is that it has

1. Strong HR policies
2. Flexibility
3. Perfect work life balance
4. The strongest R&D in the industry that files patents for the coolest tech out there.
Cons: I will never say that entire IBM is like this purely because I have personally met people who have worked here for 30+ years and retired and some are still working!
Unfortunately the cons are many. IBM is BIG and when I mean BIG really really BIG. Which again is a good thing as well as a bad thing. The reason being you are literally thrown into a gun fight with a kitchen knife. Well that is what you would feel most of the times because people just blindly expect miracles out of you without giving you clarity on anything you should know. I am referring purely on marketing terms here as I work for their marketing division. The department has some of the best talents I have ever come across fortunately, but they are hardly made use of by the management to the best capacity. 

At IBM India's marketing division, the managers proudly say that they make decisions on and for a person based on perception and not with facts. So if you are thinking about getting into the marketing division of IBM based in Bangalore and Noida, I recommend you think again. The reasons are pretty obvious.

1. You would be given ZERO clarity on what is expected from you.
2. Your peace of mind heavily depends on how good your "functional" manager is.
3. Your reviews and ratings are purely based on some superstitions that only your "people" manager knows. Here what you did in the past or present and what you want to do in the future have very little relevance.
4. Lotus Notes you will hate it
5. They give you a used laptop and ask you to use that for the next 5 years and charge your department to fix if something goes wrong because it is out of warranty. This happens in the company that gave us the personal computer.
6. Incompetent management. By that I mean you have a people manager, functional manager, geographical focal point, and then a million people in the geographical region you support asking you all sorts of thing that are not at all clear or briefed to you. They expect you to be in god mode and do anything.
7. They dont do anything to retain the right talent when they show the intention to move on.
8. There is very little room for R&R and most of the time, you'd be better off making some R&R yourself with friends who are on the same wavelength.
9. the most important reasons of all. What you see on paper is "not" what you get and appraisals are mostly unheard of.