Company: IBM
Date: 2012-03-09
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

Great heritage, brand and values; company is doing well but its employees are not....
Pros: - Great heritage, brand and values at the Corporate level.
- Great set of employees, still attracts good people
- Very clean when it comes to doing business
- Good work-life balance; you decide if you want to stretch. If you stretch you do well for yourself. 
- Very good place for women and young mothers
- Job rotation is encouraged; so you don't have to leave the company for new experiences.
- Cutting edge work in its field
- Solid reputation with clients and partners; IBM business card always opens doors.
Cons: - Its a "Manager-Driven" company - Managers decide every aspect of a employees life; i.e, IBM HR is irrelevant; we can do without it; nobody will miss them.
- The performance management system or Personal Business Commitments (PBC) process has degenerated to a highly political process; objectivity and fairness is totally lost and PBC ratings are today an index of managers favorites.
- Promotions are highly political; for senior levels your promotion depends on how many Americans you know ( of course it is a American company after all.)
- Culture of sycophancy; Bosses expect subordinates to be pliant people; different view points are not appreciated.
- Bad paymaster by company policy - Market Reference Point (MRP) for compensation by IBM policy is 50 percentile. The MRP is the mid-point  for the market for a particular job based on competitive information by industry and country. That means that IBM will always pay you below the 50% mark for any job role & experience level. If your pay exceeds the 50% mark (or 100%+ of Prevailing Market Rate) then your increments stop. Longer you work for this company more you fall behind in your compensation.
- Slow career progression is the norm -  The company will offer you a role that is banded at a higher band level but you cannot cascade to a higher band and pay level. But that higher band level and pay is easily offered to less qualified external hires, current employees have to wait years for their promotions. The company clearly takes current employees for granted.
- Company management is obsessed with 2015 Financial roadmap and returning cash to shareholders and in the process not investing in employees with the result that company executives and shareholders are doing well but its employees are not...