Company: IBM
Date: 2015-10-04
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

IBM is going downhill
Pros: - Flexibility to work from home for some positions
- Good medical/dental/vision benefits
- IBM discounts
- Name recognition
Cons: Some managers at IBM are not competent enough for the job.   A lot of employees get promoted based on who they know and not what they know.  I have seen so many colleagues get passed up on promotions because the person that was hired knew someone at the top.  Executives and directors are constantly recommending kids and friends to jobs and they get hired, even if they may not be the best fit for the job.  A lot of college graduates of IBMer parents can get hired easily even if they are not the best fit.  College kids are getting hired into IBM and they make a lot more money than IBMers who have been at the company for 20 years, and then the college kids leave within 2 - 3 years.  

In my group, the managers would gossip about other employees and during PBC (annual review) time, those employees who kissed the most butt got the best ratings.  If you don't brag about yourself and complain about not getting a high rating, you won't get one.  Also, you just need to threaten to leave the company and you will get a high rating, you may not get more money, but you will get a high rating.  Managers are not proactive with the best employees in terms of praise, they react out of fear. Why should you threaten to leave before you get attention?

The best people who are humble and do good work get passed over for other loud mouth, over confident people who complain and threaten to leave the company if they don't get a raise and a high performance rating.

Don't even bother looking for another position internally because you can't move between the different business groups (consulting to marketing or services to software sales, etc), there is a cap on the budget and most groups can only hire internally within the group, so if you are looking to get another job, it better be in your current business org or you can't move to another job.

The PBC (annual review) process is a joke (as explained above).  You will only get a top rating if you are friends with your manager, you kissed a lot of butt during the year, you complain about not getting enough money and recognition and you complain about how hard you worked during the year.

Some of the top managers/executives just don't have time for you, everyone is just too busy.  My manager would cancel our monthly status meetings at the last minute and not offer to reschedule, so we never talked unless he had something urgent or wanted me to do something for him.

Good people who do a good job are taken advantage of and expected to do more work than everyone else while the complainers don't get as much work.

If you are marked as a "low performer", your manager won't tell you until the end of the year and by that time, its too late to improve your performance and once you are named as a "low performer", your days are numbered and you are the list to be asked to leave IBM once it comes time for a round of layoffs, it doesn't matter how much you improve, once you are a low performer, you will always be seen as this.  I was a manager at one point during my career and I disagreed with this policy, its so disgusting.  I hated every bit of the performance process and wanted to praise all my employees for working hard and I was always forced to name 2 - 3 of the lowest performers on my team even though everyone on the team was strong.  How disgusting and horrible, what a way to make people feel good, right?

I enjoyed a lot of colleagues I worked with, but I had to be careful of the people who gossiped or was looking to backstab you to make themselves look good.  Keep your personal life away from work because people will use it against you to say that you are not committed to work, especially if you have some personal issues you are dealing with.  

IBM boasts getting a mentor but the top executives and managers are all too busy to mentor you.  During my time at IBM,  I had multiple mentors and at some point in time, they just got too busy and they didn't want to take a few minutes to talk, they would have their secretaries cancel the meetings and never respond to emails.  Oh and people at IBM don't respond to emails, you have to call them if you need something.

Expect to be invited to long meetings that are pointless and drag on and on.  IBMers love to talk and hear themselves talk, so get ready to be invited to meetings where people just talk to talk, no goal or mission.  Always request information about the meeting to make sure you need to join, otherwise most meetings are just a waste of time or people sitting on the phone sharing gossip.

I loved working at IBM at first but over the years, it is getting worse and worse and if IBM keeps hiring incompetent people, it will keep going downhill.