Company: IBM
Date: 2018-07-18
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Worked on two teams, had two very different experiences.
Pros: - Mobility within the company, and the culture to encourages it.  I worked for 1.5 years on one team and then moved to another for another 1.5 years that was under different leadership.
- Excitement of being at Watson post-Jeopardy when it transitioned from a research effort to an entire product group.
- First team situated in the Watson CTO org was in a special projects group that valued innovation, attempted to cultivate an edgier company culture.  
- Second team situated closer to Watson research efforts also had exciting projects, provided great mentoring, helped me improve greatly as an engineer.   Fantastic work/life balance, set your own hours etc.
- Paternity leave was adequate.
Cons: - No to very little in the way of bonuses each year.
- Difficult to move up in the org.  Manager wanted to give me a band adjustment, but wasn't allowed to do it for anyone.
- First team I worked on had a director, who was overly demanding, disliked in the org, manipulative, disqualified for the job technically / creatively, would frequently ask in the morning what you'd accomplished last night and encouraged working through the weekends--a nasty flip-side of a company trying to change its culture.  This director was eventually shutdown, but only after years of bad behavior.
- Second team was frequently moving from project to project, and not linked to efforts that brought a lot of value.  Manager barely managed, and was focused more on his own research and credibility as an academic, than the wellbeing of his team.  He also didn't have many friends in the org.  This team was remote and in my year and half there, the company only flew me out once for the initial interview.  The second time I went at my own expense, since my family was visiting a friend in the city.  Typical of IBM having very constrained budgets for travel.