Company: IBM
Date: 2014-09-23
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Put Your Time In, Go Someplace Else
Pros: Very relaxed management. You are not watched, your breaks are not policed. You are expected to be a responsible adult, to clean your plate and to make sure your work is done well. As bad as things have become, this is still an excellent company in ways that are not readily obvious, and which cannot be measured in a simple scale of 1-5. IBM hires and supports a very diverse group of people, and the easy "we trust you, you should know what's best" atmosphere has a way of promoting excellent ideas, as well as creating a safe, fun-loving environment that is simultaneously VERY productive (depending on the circumstance and on the people you are working with). The people who have been with IBM for a long time remember this feeling and they are slow to let it fade, even as the company steadily crumbles upon itself -- an issue that is 110% to blame on the upper echelon; the sales and marketing guys, and the VP's who continually choose to obey the stock market rather than their moral compass. It is a complex story to tell. IBM is not just a company, it is a legacy that has rolled on for years and years. Entire families have grown and endured with IBM, including my own. Within the company there is a culture, replete with its own distinct values and sense of humor. People truly love this company, and though I can tell you frankly that I absolutely abhor IBM and all of its evils, I still must tip my hat and give respect where it is due.
Cons: IBM has been slowly dying for 25 years. It is as simple as that. As it continues to malinger and fail, the people in charge of funding have become increasingly petty, and as a result the employees near the bottom rung have become bitter and very unhappy.  Literally every year, they will chop or redraft the benefits and find some way to keep money in their own pockets instead of putting it in their workers' bank accounts. There are no raises. I worked for IBM for more than 3 years and never got a raise, despite the fact that I worked like a dog and genuinely tried to bring my best to the table. You will watch as coworkers in relevant companies get steady raises every year. Instead of a raise, everyone nags at you and reminds you of the things you have done wrong. No one gets raises except for the top 5%, because IBM doesn't want to spend the money on layoffs in the US, and would rather encourage everybody to leave by creating low morale. Toward the end I turned into one of the disgruntled ones, and refused to give more than the bare minimum, simply out principal. They will lay off 2 or 3 hundred of the techs/engineers, saying nothing about it and leaving everyone to read about it in the news. Then a week later they will promote people within management ($10-$20k raises), and there will be a chorus of congratulatory emails. Or they will hand out bundles of cheap trinkets or ugly T-shirts with IBM logos, stuff that people really don't want or need -- but no raises, or more cut benefits, or another asset company sold away to a big competitor. Like someone truly believes you will be proud to wear IBM on your sleeve after they have slapped you in the face for years.

There were 12 layers of management between me and the CEO. No one knows what they do, none of them are in touch with the goings on in the fab or the office. You don't see them, you never meet them. It is all chaos and self-important job titles, and it's such a tangled mess of people that it takes months and months to get things changed, or to get funding, or to finish a project. 

They will not pay for your tuition (even though it's proudly listed as a perk when you sign the offer letter). The only way they'll pay for your schooling is if you are already an engineer with a bachelors degree, or if you have a friend who is high in management. If you are one of the grunts in the trench (like me), then you will be coldly informed that the program is "frozen indefinitely." 3 years of my life went by and I did not earn a single college credit, because I was counting on IBM to foot the bill, and all I could afford on my own were mortgage payments and gas money. Since I never got a raise, it got harder to even do that.

They will not let you work overtime. You and your boss will get in serious trouble if you record any overtime on your time card. Money is tight, they will tell you; the quarterly profits are weak-- No overtime. They will expect you to work tirelessly, to stress yourself until your hair turns gray, but you will not be allowed to come in and finish that work for a little extra money. On the other hand, the salaried employees will work 70-80 hours a week (no joke). They will sacrifice their life for IBM and are rarely allowed to rollover their vacation days. I got emails in my inbox from 4, 5am: engineers who never did anything except work for IBM. Those will be the employees who see promotions and raises. Not the people who spend time with their families or drinking a beer with their buddies after work -- you know, people who get it. 

There is no training, you are expected to jump in and figure things out for yourself. When you are working with multimillion dollar machines, this means that you are expected to be perfect. There is no room for error. Couple this with the continual threat of layoffs, as well as the aggravation of your low pay, and you will be reluctant to do anything, to the point where you will learn to immediately refuse responsibility for anything unless you are explicitly forced by a higher authority. Everyone plays some variation of this "not me" game. People don't go out of their way to help each other. They are focused on preserving themselves. It is a depressing environment.