Company: IBM
Date: 2015-12-16
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former

Worst Sales Engineering job I had in 17yr career
Pros: Known brand
Matrix organization which makes it easy to coast without anyone noticing
Slow pace, tolerant of mediocrity
Can be good for career if you have one of the rare Managers willing to help you advance - most are more concerned about their own career than yours
Better than being unemployed
A place where a smart person can do their work in a 25-30hr work week and do something else on the side.
Cons: Aging dinosaur with little direction from the top
Software Group spends lots on acquisitions and drops the ball integrating with the rest of the portfolio
You will not learn the art of selling here - Enterprise deals are done at the end of the year and negotiated over steak dinners.  Customers spend 8 or 9-figures, are happy with deep discounts and don't really know what they're buying - just that they're getting a good deal.  Most product is never used and your commission is based not on what you actively sold - it's based on what someone decided your % of the overall deal is.
Benefits are terrible (and getting worse every year) vs. the best available from leading Tech companies - the only people who say they're great are the 10+ year relics who are buying the party line that "Big Blue is a great place to work".  Maybe it once was, no longer.
Lots of infighting in Software Group.  Acquired technologies sell against one another and against IBM's own GBS.