Company: IBM
Date: 2015-09-01
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

IBM
Pros: 1. Ability to work from home provides flexibility and work/life integration.  This, however, is changing with current drive to push workers back into a traditional office setting.
2. Slightly above average benefits such as vacation, discounts for IBMers.
3. Diverse workforce provides opportunity for employees to interact and learn from team members from different backgrounds, cultures, countries.
4. Strong historical reputation as a good place to work.
Cons: 1. Senior leaders don't seem to have a clear concept of corporate mission or strategy.
2. There are a lot of great ideas about the company and its strategy, but it mostly feels like this operates in theory and not in practice.
3. Extremely bureaucratic, although there is more emphasis of late on 'self-directed teams', this feels more like 'corporate-speak' and feels almost nonexistent in practice.
4. Performance rating system has forced percentages, and is very subjective.  This turns performance appraisal into a popularity contest.  Without high ratings it is impossible to get promotions or raises.
5. Significant loss of knowledge and subject matter expertise due to resource actions (layoffs), forced retirement, and divestitures.