Company: IBM
Date: 2013-01-09
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Confirmed

Fractured and unfocused leadership
Pros: - They are very flexible in terms of hours, working location, and (usually) telecommuting

- They are committed to equality for all employees.

- Excellent research division with a lot of smart folks willing to experiment, and the funds to back it up.

- Will reward you for patent disclosures

- Transparent review process

- Lots of potential positions and projects to work on.
Cons: - They are not competitive in terms of salary (for engineers at least) and have lost quite a few very important team members because other companies pay 30% more for the same work.

- Teams that have been decimated by people leaving are expected to accomplish the same goals with no replacements or with entry-level replacements with no real experience.

- Increasing reliance on less qualified foreign engineers because they work hard, cost less, but are most adept at buck passing.

- *Very* focused on patents for advancement

- I have had 6 managers in 4 years, 3 of those within the last year and only one of them was local. Two of them are no longer with the company.

- Massive corporate bureaucracy

- Few perks

- Office culture is hit or miss... it's either semi-mandatory or it's a ghost-town all the time.

- You share an office, which would be nice if they weren't designed like tiny windowless catacombs.

- Getting personal hardware is basically impossible except through scrounging (old laptops are issued every four years now with limited choice. If you want monitors, keyboards, mice, a desktop, even CD-Rs you're out of luck).