Company: IBM
Date: 2016-05-13
Overall rating: 5/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Great Company with Some Wrinkles to Work On
Pros: The flexibility to work from home when not on a consulting project is a huge plus.  The company also treats its employees as adults, and promotes your having a good work/life balance.  

The benefits are great, including the HSA employer contributions if you complete 1-2 health programs (like learning about meditation). 

Other employees are encouraged to help the new ones come on-board.  There's a culture of openness and support that I've never seen at another organization.  There's also a culture of innovation -- you're encouraged to use IBM's tools to implement new ideas, and you're either commended or compensated for it.

It's really a great company that feels stable, and has quality intelligent employees.
Cons: My biggest con is how consultants are assigned to projects.  It seems as if my Associate Partner (AP -- e.g., my manager) is burdened with not only marketing me to other AP's with projects needing resources, but also with getting new business, doing my reviews, leading consulting projects, building client relationships, and more.  As a result, I've yet to meet an AP who isn't running around breathless with little time.

This affects the process by which consultants are assigned to projects.  Projects appear to be primarily staffed by word of mouth -- e.g., an AP will ask around "Do you know someone with this skillset?" -- which appears to be the easiest thing for them to do because they're overburdened. 

For example, as a project I was on was ending, the AP asked two consultants in the room if they knew how to do XYZ.  After they gave a 30 sec elevator speech, the AP basically assigned them to his project.  Based on that!  

The alternative is for the AP to look at our resumes posted internally.  But unless you highlight the right things in your job history, you may not get new assignments.  

In short, if you're new or if you've been doing things outside of your skills sweet spot just to get billable hours, you've got a problem because no one knows you nor what you can do.  On the latter, unless your resume has the right keywords, you might not get called for a project.

I was surprised at how this works, and thought it would be more organized and fair.