Company: IBM
Date: 2014-11-29
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Consulting by Degrees is a disorganized program where the projects are boring and your work is mindless
Pros: IBM Global Business Services is engaged in a decent amount of very interesting and cutting edge work with their clients and if you manage to get on one of those projects you'll learn a  lot and probably do some pretty cool stuff. Work life balance has  been very reasonable - I might be an exception but I rarely work over 50 hours a week. Brand name is still very well recognized and respected across all industries. At least in Consulting by Degrees, job security is pretty much guaranteed unless you do something horribly dumb. The people in general are really great, specifically in CbD.
Cons: Where to start? Huge company means horrible communication, very disorganized, inability to pursue interests and a serious lack of investment/care in employees. CbDers are just considered a cheap resource so you basically become a victim of supply demand, i.e. if there's a need for you on a project, IBM couldn't care less if you're interested or not, you're cheap so you're going. The actual work and roles you are typically given is often associated with 'secretary work' or a very repetitive process. Your manager is pretty much useless and only there to make you feel like one person in the company cares about you. Networking to get on projects you are interested in is very difficult, be prepared for a lot of people saying no. The training you have every 4-6 months is a joke and shouldn't be called training. Very difficult to get recognized for performance and annual reviews are chaos since your manager, who doesn't know a thing about you, is reviewing you along with a hundred other CbDers.