Company: IBM
Date: 2014-07-14
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Solid company, but too much bureaucracy
Pros: Start out with 15 days of PTO, plus some number of "personal choice holidays", meaning you get about a month of vacation time. Insurance policies are fine too. As a company, telecommuting is widely regarded as an acceptable practice, so you can work from home if you need to. I also found I was consistently being recognized for excelling at my job, receiving two moderate pay raises and a bonus in under a year based on performance alone. Neither were life changing numbers, but were appreciated nonetheless. Overall I felt that I was treated extremely well. Even outside of my own division, I feel that there are plenty of opportunities for me within the company should I choose to go after them.
Cons: I would describe the pay as "moderate". Sometimes I feel like IBM is more concerned with developing their image than developing their products and services. My team's pleas for more software developers to handle the obscene workload thrust upon us has been dutifully ignored. Although I felt my job as a software developer was secure, I did not get the same feeling for all other positions, like Sales, Marketing, HR.

The biggest con is absurd amount of bureaucracy you have to deal with on a daily basis. Examples: Submitting tickets requesting an approval to someone who has to request approval to approve your request.
A support system that integrates with a support system that integrates with a support system that integrates with a support system - all of which track the SAME THING.
You're forced to used Lotus Notes for an email client. Anyone who tells you it isn't that bad is trying to make themselves feel better. We're talking about a program that comes with another program called Lotus Zap, which only has a single purpose: Killing Lotus Note's process when it freezes on you.

I know the above examples sound like jokes, but I'm not exaggerating here. The amount of time I have wasted on slow, bloated processes and confusing interfaces is appalling.