Company: IBM
Date: 2013-01-10
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

> 10 Years in Finance
Pros: IBM is a good place to get your career started.
Given the breadth of IBMs business, you can get broad experience in technology if you move through software, hardware, and/or services. However, it will take several years to get valuable experience in more than one of those groups.
Compared to other tech firms, if you are a good performer, employment is stable in tough economic times.  They do lay-off, but tend to do a small number of pruning, vs. large reactionary layoffs.
Cons: It is bureaucratic.
Lots of room to grow for early professionals, but almost none for mid-carer and up.
Requires unhealthy dedication to get to upper employee bands or executive appointment. . . and as life goes, this coincides generally when people have small kids. So you choice is be a rockstar IBM employee, or have a family life whose main theme is your not around and your career is the central family priority.
Raises have never been good, but lately the average percentage for the finance organization is 1%.  So while they have a theory of meritocracy, if you only have 1% to divide up, it is hard to reward anyone.
The bonus program is billed as up to 12% annually, but practically speaking, it is in the 3-5%. 5% being a very good year.