Company: IBM
Date: 2015-02-22
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

No vision, blurry future, good springboard
Pros: Relative freedom to research almost whatever you like. Relatively good research facilities. Good work-life balance. Working with some of the brightest and nicest people in the field. Pays well compared to many academic positions around the world.
Cons: Freedom to research and great work life balance derive from the fact that most of the research do not make it into any product; i.e. research work carried out is unimportant and irrelevant. No clear strategy to convert much of the research into profit and a coherent product range. Many feel that the research lab is a marketing gimmick, to generate patent leadership of the company with mostly useless patents. Hiring for permanent staff is almost unheard of in my years there, only external-funded, temporary contract staff are hired to dripfeed the chronic manpower shortage, which seriously hampers research efforts. Staff morale is either low or non-existent, with much uncertainty about the future of the lab and their jobs (e.g. the impending Project Chrome). Roadmap 2015 was a disaster and thankfully it was given up. Hopefully the CEO has a new plan to get the company in shape. Not sure if the current CEO is to blame as she inherited the plan from her predecessor.