Company: IBM
Date: 2014-09-09
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Boston Area IBM Software Group
Pros: I am a twelve year veteran of IBM who came to the company via an acquisition.   I worked in the Boston area exclusively with occasional trips to New York and offices that were in Dublin. I was part of the company's software group and spent time as people manager and individual contributor.

 IBM offered a competitive salary initially and a very robust benefits package to employees.  They also offered many opportunities for skills enhancement through various education offerings both in terms of internally offered courses or reimbursement.  Movement within the company to new opportunities was another attractive feature, but not one that I personally used in my time there.  Telecommuting was an option for many and I was able to take advantage of this policy 2 days per week which helped ease the sting of my 90 mile daily round trip commute. 

The company is mature, has many established systems,  and a specific way of doing things.  People used to working in an environment with a very defined set of responsibilities and processes would do well.
Cons: IBM desires a high performance culture and purports to pay for that performance.  While one can do well initially on base salary, performance is by no means a guarantee of reward.  A key factor in leaving the company was lack of reward (of any sort) despite very good to excellent performance reviews (as experienced personally and also experienced by my peers).  At my time of employment stock awards were suspended as a means of rewarding our best employees leaving managers with little to work with other than a shrinking bonus pool to offer top employees.  Often the result would be essentially telling the employee that despite the business unit doing well their reward for performance would simply be continued employment (this was something experienced prior to the recession).

Financial pressures on IBM due to the cost of health care also had an effect on the total compensation package.  With each year available healthcare plans changed resulting in often having to switch doctors, higher deductibles and less coverage.  While the overall coverage offered was still generally better than many other companies, it became a challenge to manage the yearly changes required of moving to a new health care provider's network (transfer of records, finding new doctors in my area, ensuring I had the right coverage for my family, etc...).  More than once I had to battle the company bureaucracy to pay for federally mandated coverage.

Work-life balance became a work-life blend.  While policies like telecommuting were in place at the end of my tenure at IBM, executives were actively redefining what work-life meant at IBM.  The end result was more of a blending of work and life rather than maintaining any separation.  The option to telecommute became more restrictive with the building of a new campus and an expectation of being connected to work, even when on paid time off, became the norm.  

As a mature and large company IBM is process driven to a fault.  Innovation and creativity are stifled leading IBM to often fail in recognizing a business opportunity or industry trend (need an example? then consider their delayed entry to cloud computing).