Company: IBM
Date: 2010-04-05
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

Tough place to advance your career
Pros: Good benefits, respected company, good people, competitive pay.  As a sales person IBM has name recognition with customers, which helps get your foot in the door.  Was a better place to work when I started a few years back than it is now.
Cons: Tough to advance, unclear career paths, not enough focus on career development, hardly ever give raises, constant change in strategy - never stick with one strategy long enough to gauge its success, lots of bureaucracy (too many systems and tools, too much reporting required), not great at rewarding/recognizing success, risk/fear of layoffs.  

Pay plans are convoluted to the point where no one really understands exactly how they get paid.  Every year I worked there they changed the pay plan to pay us less and very few folks got raises (and those who did said the raises were a joke).   They have been cutting back recognition programs the last couple of years so high performance isn't really rewarded anymore.  Job is always at risk to be eliminated - lots of layoffs in inside sales the last few years.