Company: IBM
Date: 2017-07-17
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

Enterprise Sales Representative
Pros: Access to many different technologies and gain high level understanding of the complexities of  Enterprise IT.   If you like working in teams this is a great place for that.
Cons: From a sellers perspective I would not recommend working at IBM. I was there over 5 years and looking back I wish I would have left earlier.  Here are the issues you will find in a sellers role at IBM.

IBM is going through a major identity crisis to make itself relevant again and it reorganizes every 6 months.  Most customers would rather not do business with IBM, their software offerings are big, clumsy, and difficult to implement. The reorgs are painful and in my case they involved new products and new customers in each reorg.  Since IBM is notoriously stingy paying commissions they will not allow any hold overs.  Bottom line if you are working a big deal and are reorged out of that account you will not receive commissions so you just wasted 6 months of your time.

On the subject of commissions be prepared for internal disputes over who gets paid on what and how the revenue is divided.  IBM only pays 80% of the deal size in commissions (they take out 20% for maintenance fees).   Thus if you received a one million dollar quota, you will have to sell 1.2 million dollars of software to make your number.

The moral is low, good people are leaving in a continuous stream and are being laid off.  Resources are scarce and in many cases located too far away to travel so your SME's are only available by phone and they are all overworked.

My advice, there are plenty of other good companies that will treat you much better and be more fair to your career.  IBM is not one of those companies.