Company: IBM
Date: 2011-11-23
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former

Your "career" as a financial analyst in the Rochester COE is a joke
Pros: 1) Flexibility - Most managers will let you work from home if you are sick or if you are back in your hometown for a few days
2) 401K match is pretty solid - Dollar for dollar up to a 6% match, 100% vested after the first year
3) Health benefits are pretty good
4) The "IBM" name on your resume goes a long way
5) If you're a top performer they'll pay 100% of your tuition costs (MBA, grad degrees, etc)
Cons: 1)  Compensation - Base salary is downright pathetic.  I counter-offered out of college and it was turned down, but decided to work for them anyway.  Annual raises only go to employees with PBC 1 and 2+ ratings (roughly 2% a year).  Bonuses are offered to only PBC 1 (top performers) and are about 4-5% of base salary.  They COE will offer "retention bonuses" to their top performing employees ($10K in two installments of $5K over two years.  Each year you are committed to stay with the company for one year.  If you leave you must pay the bonus back).  All of these "incentives" are a slap in the face because your base salary never really grows.  

2) Growth Opportunity - From day 1 you are sold that the opportunities are endless within IBM, but in reality they are not unless you want to settle for jobs that never give you face to face exposure with middle management or senior leaders.  They constantly try to sell you that the prize is going out to Somers, NY to work with the finance teams out there, but they'll give you $60k to move out there.....to NY, which is just laughable.  Once you get out there you will work 60-70 hours a week, and it might take you 5 years to get to a level of income where you're just breaking even due to the market prices out there.  

3) Environment - Rochester absolutely sucks and becomes depressing after the first year.  If you like small towns you might object to that statement.  Your first year might seem cool working with other twenty-somethings out of college, but after a few years you'll realize that an environment where people wear shorts to work and play foosball all day is not a place where you can further your career. Also, you will share an office with another co-worker that will be from 1970 and include a phone that is also from 1970.  You'll get a work laptop, but you have to buy your own monitor if you want something bigger than a 13'' screen.  (No joke).  

4) Cost Cutting - IBM manages their expenses very closely which means you do not get the leisure of having them pay for work outings, business cards, or other sensible acts of corporate kindness when you're working on Saturday's and Sunday's.  After I left the company, I was told that the Rochester COE would no longer be getting their offices cleaned or their trash taken out (employees have to take their own trash out!).  So it looks like not only are you a financial analyst now, but you're a part-time janitor as well.  

The above might make it seem like I hate IBM, but I really do not.  It's a great company....for shareholders.  If you can commit three years of your life here you will become very marketable and make a decent sum of money if you opt to work elsewhere.