Company: IBM
Date: 2009-10-01
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

IBM Category Manager, Integrated Supply Chain (ISC) Procurement
Pros: Currently pay and benefits are better than most other companies. Information exchange and IT is very good. There are some very good people who have been with the company for a long time and are very experienced in what they do. Company still has a good reputation and still provides a decent living currently. It is nice to be able to work from home and a lot of the ISC employees do so. The company is well known for being on the cutting edge and still is and is very dedicated to being both green and forward looking. We are seeing more and more new client signings in the last half of the year and so business is beginning to pick up and more people are coming off the bench into new clients.
Cons: The company is in a down sizing mode in the United States, exporting as many jobs to out sourcing off shore as they can. Those that they can't they are attempting to reduce salaries by "Resource Actions- called RA's", which is a fancy name for reductions or firings and then rehiring at a lower salary rate to fill the same position they let go before. They have reduced approx 15k in the US this year already. As the economic climate improves, they will begin hiring more in the US as they sign more contracts, however, you must be aware that they have stated various times that the senior leadership believes that any job can be performed by off shore employees. We have seen employees brought on for just a few years and then let go when they have trained the off shore employee to do that particular function. Salary personal are expected to work 50-60 hours minimum and most are expected to work from home. They have dropped paying for office phones, cell phones and DSL. They will pay for one phone type (cell or office) and then they limit how much they will pay, such as $40 for cell, if it goes over, you must convince your manager that it was work related or suck up the extra cost yourself. They do not pay for internet service, they feel that you will have that for yourself anyway and they donâ??t have to pay for it. They have cut costs dramatically over the last two years to be able to still be profitable, and most of those cuts have been employee or employee related. Due to the cuts, we are finding more and more "untrained" off shore personnel in level  I and 2 leadership postions who really don't understand the function and who are just "managers" without the background or years of work behind them.