Company: IBM
Date: 2009-05-14
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former

IBM is alot like college, for those who can conform to its ways, it's a good experience
Pros: - Access to vast information resources
- Professional environment
- World-class corporate reputation
- Excellent place to build a foundation en route to a better job
Cons: - Zero investment in developing people, for instance, no formal commitment to ongoing training but plenty of pressure on consultants to train and obtain certifications while trying to remain billable
- Contradictory environment in which IBM controls consultants' deployments on engagements but consultants bear the risk of not being utilized
- Awkward, ineffective, and frustrating evaluation system which penalizes consultants for not having evaluations but fails to censure project leaders who fail to provide evaluations
- Growing practice to place timeline over quality
- Compartmentalization of roles and delivery practices making cross-training in another discipline practically impossible and virtually ensuring the diminishment of a consultant's value when practice areas mature or IBM decides to withdraw from that particular business
- A somewhat peculiar corporate culture typified by a "guilt trip" work ethic which often leads the leadership to fill their agenda with volumes of special projects of little or no real value. (This may explain why IBM has so many internal systems which seem to do the same thing).