Company: IBM
Date: 2014-01-27
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Culture of mediocrity
Pros: IBM used to be a great company to work for, but has been in a steady decline for a while now.  There are still many smart people left in IBM, although almost all are on the opposite of young side.  The corporate culture is the opposite of the startup culture, which has some benefits, for example, a widespread ability to work from home.  Quite a few people have had a steady job in IBM for their entire careers, although this is getting harder to accomplish now.  Some parts of IBM are doing all right, while some are in a steep decline.  If one gets into one of those good divisions, it could result in a steady job with decent pay and benefits.
Cons: The corporate culture is stifling.  For many years now, the strategy that IBM has apparently been following is reducing the size of the US workforce, through attrition and resource action, while keeping new hiring to very low levels.  This has resulted in a US workforce that is decidedly older and shrinking.  There's an acute shortage of fresh young blood and the exuberance that comes with it.  The idea was to replace lost talent in US with cheaper labor in other markets, but that has been a spectacular failure, because IBM plays hard lowball in those markets, and doesn't even come close to capturing and retaining top talent.  IBM is not poor, in fact it makes a lot of money every quarter, but the strategy has been to use this money to prop up the stock price through share buybacks and dividends rather than reinvest in development.  Relative to nimbler competition, IBM has not been investing in R&D at the level needed to stay apace with the evolution of the tech universe.  In many parts of IBM, there's a culture of poverty: shrinking budgets, steady exodus of people, and no relief in sight.  The company overall is not poor, but it certainly feels this way.  Between the brain drain due to workforce management practices, and the lack of R&D investment, IBM is no longer competitive on many (most) fronts, and has to prop itself up by regular acquisitions.  This doesn't work too well either, because ambitious people from acquired companies usually leave as soon as their contact terms allow.  Few startup-minded bright individuals can tolerate the "permanent cost-cutting" culture, heavy bureaucracy, and highly diluted level of talent that's endemic in most of IBM.