Company: IBM
Date: 2015-02-08
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Exciting world-class industrial research environment, marred by mediocre (or worse) treatment of employees by management
Pros: * Exciting opportunity to collaborate with world-class researchers covering a broad array of disciplines, focused on
solving real-world problems.
* Expectations include publishing papers in high-quality venues, allowing one to maintain good contact (and possibly even collaborations) with academic community
Cons: * Employee evaluations based on a quota system that other companies like Microsoft have now abandoned because it has been proven to hurt employee morale; employees can receive low evaluations for excellent work, and incentives can thwart collaboration among employees
* High-level corporate strategy of cutting way to growth seems wrong-headed and unsustainable, and has negative impact on Research including tight budgets and shortened time horizons for Research
* High-level corporate budget-tightening has in some cases translated to less freedom in Research, with some managers treating their teams like military command-and-control organizations