Company: IBM
Date: 2014-05-09
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

A once-great company in a long death spiral
Pros: Smart, dedicated co-workers; Some vestiges of the old collegiality at the working level.
Cons: IBM's business model is totally out of date.  They are now being marginalized by new players like Google, Amazon, etc., and old competitors like HP-Compaq.   As sales are falling drastically, they can't fire people fast enough.  The executives are running the place like a third-world banana republic:  Massive bonuses for themselves, the working stiffs in the US are all being fired for low-cost third-world labor offshore.  

The only engineering innovation that matters any more is financial engineering of the Earnings per share.  However, EPS targets can only be achieved by layoffs and share buybacks, due to falling sales, and Wall Street isn't fooled.  Businesses and employees are being jettisoned at a rapid pace, a much smaller and weaker company will be the result.