Company: IBM
Date: 2014-05-20
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

IBM GBS Consulting
Pros: I cannot think of any Pros of IBM at the current time. IBM USED to be a company that had core values, integrity and followed these religiously, the company is now run by mostly greedy execs and deceptive motives.
Cons: 1. For IBM GBS Consulting, if you are not VERY keen on programming and testing, you are wasting your time. IBM GBS looks for desperate, highly skilled technical brains to do the hard work and in return they are given a low pay, no choice in projects and pigeon-holed based on their degree / skillset.

2. IBM GBS operates under a guise of flexibility and variety when this is not the case. Its main aim is to fill seats on large contracts to private enterprises such as large banks (and a few smaller government departments) and its number one main is to make sure these young "consultants" are billable in some way shape or form. This means a lot of grunt work that is menial and highly technical in nature to tight deadlines with very little "fun" and work that is very stressful in nature.

3. Ultimately, you should not apply unless you absolutely love getting your hands dirty and interacting very little with actual people. You will be a backdoor programmer/tester a large amount of the time. Heads down, butt up and program/test small modules of code with no strategic vision or career growth is the mantra that IBM GBS push.

4. Their "Grad Blue" program is a glorified university course with far too much information to decipher in a small amount of time. Its basically a trial to see how desperate you are and whether you are cut out for the rat race that is GBS consulting.

Good luck ambitious grads :) But just know, you can earn more, perform much more stimulating work and enjoy your a much, much better life work/balance at other IT companies that treat you like a human instead of a machine.