Company: IBM
Date: 2011-12-05
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

Frustrating - So much potential squandered by living quarter to quarter instead of long term
Pros: There are a lot of different roles you can find yourself in, which can be good from a career perspective. Often times you are thrown into the mix of something else if you are competent in your current duties and can be counted on, which can broaden your horizons and perhaps you'll find a niche you really enjoy.

Some great people that work in IBM and when you get to interact with them (when IBM's internal boxes/walls don't keep you from working together) they can really be fantastic.
Cons: You're a cog. They'll run you at 125-175% until you burn out. Work-life balance is non existent*.
Related to the above, there's since everyone is running around like crazy, or they're fired, there's no surplus capacity. So when more work comes down the chute - guess what? No one else will be hired on to do it, so carve some more space into your evening's and weekends.

Company tools are God awful. Such a mish-mash of different interfaces from different acquisitions and they're are almost all terrible. The funny thing is, we make fine products/services for our customers, and have tin cans and string for all our internal processes.

Boy do we love our process. Just a maze of process. If you're lucky, you'll have someone who can help you navigate it, but it can be crushing at times.

Management. There are some really good managers in IBM, but there's also a lot of bad ones (especially in Exec positions). Seems like for every one "worker bee", there's a manager and 10 executives. Can be nuts.*

* - Probably depends on your pay band, job, section of the company, etc