Company: IBM
Date: 2009-01-29
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

Simply a "self propelled meat-bag" for this company.  They no longer have "respect for the individual".
Pros: If you work in an office like Raleigh or Boulder where the main tech centers are, there is a good sense of teamwork with the employees that are onsite.
Cons: It's expected you will train the revolving door of new employees in the Global factories.  In addition to supporting the 24x7 Service Level agreements for your Strategic Outsourcing customer, you will need to keep track of the constant stream of employees in Argentina, India, Romainia, Brazil, and Australia and fill out things for them like customer ID request forms, background check forms, and train them how to use the tools they are described as being "experts" in using because they are either too stupid or illiterate to follow detailed instructions.

The review system at IBM, known as the PBC process has NOTHING TO DO WITH ACTUAL PERFORMANCE.  You are given an arbitrary set of goals by your management that THEY are supposed to accomplish and at the end of the year and depending on who your boss wants to distribute bonuses to, you get rated a 1, 2+, 2, 3, or a 4.  (1 being the best, 4 being the worst.  I was rated a "1" one year, worked even harder the following year and was rated a "2".  I seriously slacked off the  following year by doing my work half-heartedly and was rated a "2+".  The year before I was rated a "1", I was rated a "3".  It was after being told by my management that I was going to be rated a "1"for that year I transferred to a new department and my manager issued the "3".  I sent the previous good emails and comments to a 3rd line manager as part of a formal review and was told quote "Sometimes it's just your turn to get the "3"".  Way to reward for performance IBM!