Company: IBM
Date: 2009-02-09
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

If You Join IBM, Figure Out Your Exit Strategy!
Pros: IBM has/had an excellent software product line, with both bredth and depth.  IBM also has some outstanding technical, sales, development and marketing people.  If you tap into these resources, you can really grow your own depth and expertise.  We also have great links into our clients and business partners, a network you can use both now while you're at IBM, and in your future, should you choose to move on.  However, the effectiveness "Team IBM" is often diluted by the product pillar mentality:  our executive focus on a particular product pillar, rather than the overall solution that the customer buys.  While we talk a great solutions game, it is still painful to implement.

There is a lot to be learned at IBM, but I'd suggest you not consider it your end job - think about where you want this company, and your role in it, to take you!
Cons: This company once had a culture based on quality, customer satisfaction, and respect for the individual.  These are no longer values held by our executives.  Commitments - made to business partners, clients, and employees - are not kept.  Executives are not held accountable:  the employees are.  The executives are given a quota for "management initiated separations" and despite an employee's track record and prior performance, an employee may be dropped from a 1 to a 3 and immediately place on the "measured mile".  Even though this runs counter our published guidelines!   An "Open Door" will only back the executive, regardless of the evidence.  This had not been the case in the past!.  On top of this, routine "downsizings" cull the herd, regardless of performance rating.  The employment relationship at IBM is out of balance:  IBM holds all the cards.  Few people get beyond 5 years of service anymore. While some of this may be due to globalization, and some of this is not avoidable, most of it comes from the view by IBM executive leadership that people are no longer desirable resources, but only an expense to be controlled.  They're missing the point that a loyal employee will produce so much more than one just doing his time.  Presently, IBM is schizophrenic:  there are some outstanding people in IBM who live up to the old expectations and basic beliefs, and others who are just collecting their unearned executive bonuses.