Company: IBM
Date: 2012-12-02
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Outsiders will be baffled
Pros: IBM is large, stable and fairly well organized...which means that if you grow up in the company and are part of the system, it all makes sense.  Paths forward are relatively well marked and the company is open to you making moves. Works very well for new hires and fresh-from-college grads.  Work life balance under most managers is easy to achieve.
Cons: IBM is large, stable and fairly well organized....which means that if you are acquired by IBM it will all seem a bit foreign to you.  Things move fairly slowly, innovation in some divisions is hard to come by because of the way the dev groups are incented, and the organization (i.e. bureaucracy) can be stifling.  The problem is if you come into the company as a very experienced person and come in at the wrong level/band, they don't know what to do with you and the path out is hard to find.