Company: IBM
Date: 2011-04-28
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

Not your father's IBM (GBS)
Pros: After 15 years or so of working for IBM, the company that was once a delight has now become internally commoditized to the point where it is no longer a compelling place to work.  As others have pointed out, when you measure for revenue and profitability and little else, well, you get what you measure, at least for a while.  If you emphasize getting ink on paper (signings) and give lip service to competence and ability to deliver what is being sold, eventually that can remake reputations.  That also contributes to a work environment that is constant firefighting and trying to put a good face on various troubles.  An emperors new clothes sort of scenario.  

Reasonably good opportunity to network (but ever increasing targets means this is less so than before since people spend time chasing numbers for their measured targets rather than collaborating, which is not measured)

Constantly evolving technology and consulting strategies mean things can stay interesting (but the constant churn also keeps the organization off balance and inhibits the ability to deliver what IBM sells)

Pay has seemed pretty good in the past, but it has flattened out. and bonuses pegged to growth mean that two years in a row of great performance only rewards the first year, since the second year did not grow at a higher rate than the first.
Cons: Red tape is up - increased focus on business conduct guidelines leads to constant flow of emails to take ever more education on new policies, challenges to expense reports, and other requests that absorb an increasing amount of time.

Competence is down - IBM has become so fond of innovation that there is no longer a stable foundation underlying day to day work.  Ever day becomes an experiment.  Just in time project staffing means you have no idea who will be on a project and whether or not it will be a training mission for them.

Targets are up - utilization and sales targets continue to go up.  You can take your vacation, but you may have to work back a couple of weeks worth of hours to make up for it in order to meet your target.

Work life balance is down - it is expected that people will work well over 40 hours per week of billable work to meet utilization targets, then add more hours for the increasing red tape, more hours for long distance travel, and you quickly end up with no time for yourself or family.

Travel is up - cross country travel is up.  One person travels to the east coast for project A and another travels to the west coast for project B.  Despite an expressed policy to not "staff to clear the bench", it is clear that that is how projects are staffed today.

People managers are now working full time in the field, typically on projects where none of their reports are deployed - how much time do you think they spend getting to know their reports? Self-promotion is now a must, and it can be paper thin since who has the time to check out what people say about themselves?