Company: IBM
Date: 2014-04-09
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Hard labor.  Boss, I wish you stop being so good to me.....
Pros: There's a great deal of prestige and resources.  The consultants you work with are knowledgably and friendly.  The pay is fair and reasonable.  You can work from home or office (when you are in town).
Cons: I saw a pattern of under-bidding projects and under-estimating manhours.  It resulted in a typical work week being 55+ hours.  Sales people knew they could make up for lost revenue in following quarters in the customer billing cycle.  In my role, I had to travel, and travel time to Customer Site was treated as personal time, and did not factor into my reported work hours.  Expect long hours every week.

Also, I found management to be hands off and most employees are encouraged to be SELF MANAGE in all aspects of your employment.  If you have any questions about time sheets, expense reports, training, performance assessments, and so forth, then you'll leverage your network of co-workers to learn what you need to get done.  Your manager will be a full time consultant on another project, and your manager will NOT know you.  And do not expect to your manager to take an interest, given they need to manage you AND their job.  The middle managers are good people, but over-burden. 

Travel is challenging.  You will schedule and build your trip itinerary.  Hotel, Air, and Car must be in policy.  Policy means you are taking the cheapest AIR (you're offered no non-stops and Sunday travel for east coast assignments), and IBM's prefer HOTEL is Holiday Inns (no Hiltons or Marriotts), and expect to be audited every 6 months - ALWAYS save your receipts - I did and never had an issue.

And IBM's mantra is STAY BILLABLE.  If you're being ask to work on a bid and proposal, you're asked to do it on your own time.  The Directors and VPs are demanding everyone be 110% billable meaning NO VACATION and MANDATORY OVERTIME.  Forget your family and community involvement.

And given our Company is losing money (5 consecutive quarters) and how can it maintain its level of revenue.  You can cut cost only so much.  And you see it selling hard assets.  Many of us are wondering where the new revenue will be coming from (so are the Wall Street Analyst).  Watson has been a failure.  There's initiatives for Cloud and Big Data, but they are heavily reliant on self training.  And where can you find time to train when we are expected to always be billable.  And IBM hourly rates (IBM bills me at  $250 / hour), can be found locally at lesser rate.