Company: IBM
Date: 2008-06-11
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former

sucks
Pros: It may be good to work for ibm if your are fresh out of college,
Respect: at least everyone knows the company name. 

Benefits: average for a large company. You get PPO and travel perks, but they quickly lose their "perk" status. 
Work/life balance: it doesn't exist. The travelling owns you. And if you work locally, they'll still work you to death because they don't care what the turnover rate is. Most local DC projects for the gov't are dull. 44 hours is required every week. Nope, you don't get paid the extra 4 hours. It was never stated in the offer, but yep - they added it in when you join up. 

Career Growth: This is a complete joke if you start out on the bottom. I've worked my ass off and got NO WHERE. The people determining your advancement are never on the projects you're on, they never monitor what you do, and the only thing they have to go on is one or two project assessments, and a PBC where you explain how well you think you've met your own goals that you set every year. It's a joke. All the money and extra hours worked goes to the top. 

Location: or rather, lack of location. If you're consulting, wherever there is work is your location. Now, this might be cool if you're just starting out - but eventually you become extremely stressed out and lose all contact with your friends. 

Co-worker competence: again, horrible. Underqualified people work here and stay under the radar.
Cons: IBM really does stand for Idiots Become Managers. I did time with IBM as a contractor - the kind of employee they hire through another agency so they don't have to give them perks like decent pay, benefits, raises, vacation/personal/sick time, job security, or respect. Maybe if I worked harder on my golf swing I could've had a shot. The contractors were treated like dirt, and I think that's the whole reason we were hired like that - cheap labor to be abused like slaves. We worked just as hard, dare I say much harder than our supposed full fledged IBM employee coworkers but for much less money and no way to move up in the world! But shouldn't we be making so much money, you know, doing overtime? NO - overtime was frowned upon. Our time wasn't valuable enough to justify paying us more for. They could just hire another schlub at some low rate to take over for us when we were done. Sure they might be a complete idiot who might cause irreparable harm to client relations but they're cheap! As for raises, instead of raises we got annual pay CUTS - cuts that we were made to feel guilty about - our letters said we should be grateful that we got to keep our jobs, and that everyone had to sacrifice. Everyone meaning the contractors. Full employees were comfy and cozy with their nice checks and health insurance. Our schedules would change at a moment's notice. Can you work this weekend? Ok, well great, and by the way, because you said yes you're working every weekend from now on. Graveyard shift? Same deal. When IBM lost clients as they have a talent for, the contractors were cut loose without notice or severance. Some time before the Melville office closed a local newspaper ran an article about the fact that the offices were closing. IBM was quick to react, assuming doing absolutely nothing could be considered a reaction. Eventually a statement was issued that there were no plans to close the offices, and a meeting was held to that effect as well. Several days later a formal announcement was made that the offices were closing. And that was that.