Company: IBM
Date: 2014-04-08
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

IBM Hardware is in decline
Pros: Nice work-life balance and lots of resources because of its large size.  Good place to start working ... they usually only hire new college graduates, anyway. Usually at the state of the art in terms of hardware design, but that is in decline.   Nice co-workers but the company pits everyone against everyone for performance reviews.
Cons: If you going into IBM hardware, be careful.  Hardware earns money but unfortunately costs money.  The amount it earns is not as much as the top dogs think it should, so I would expect it to sell off or lay off more people in this area.  The company is top heavy, lots of senior people so you can get some early promotions, but then there are too many top dogs (due to experience) so you are stuck.  Its EDA tools are out dated --- at least it should try harder to use industry standard ones --- and that can be a problem if you ever leave.  Lots of regulations from the top down.