Company: IBM
Date: 2017-11-27
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Confirmed

Amazing company with ample flexibility, work-life balance and opportunities to learn
Pros: There are different groups within IBM with slightly different work environments/opportunities, however, all governed by the same company policies. For example, if you work for GBS, you may not get a lot of learning opportunities or flexibility in your work timings given the fact that its a Services division and you cater directly to customers and most of the things are governed by their own compliance policies like having to mandatorily work from the office due to the secure nature of the project, etc.

This review is for the IBM Software Labs.

1. Great learning opportunities as you have DevOps, Watson and latest cloud tech to work on.
2. You have all the available tools for self-learning and full admin access on your company laptop to install any tool approved by the company and be innovative.
3. There is a lot of flexibility in the timings which of-course depends on your manager and your work.
4. Leaves are not an issue. You have unlimited sick and casual leaves subject to approval and responsible use.
5. You get a MAC Pro.
6. If you have worked long enough and have consistent good ratings, you have project managers willing to take you in their project even though you may not be new to the technology. They have faith on you that you will pick up soon.
7. If you are really smart, you can make really good incentives by filing patents and its encouraged. Anyone can file patent, even if you are a fresher.
8. The only company that doesn't count the in-time and out-time. They trust their employee. Again this is subject to your manager.

With all that said, there can ofcourse be exceptions to the above like every other company. I have seen the worst and the best in this company and if you have a little patience with this company and get yourself in the right project with the right manager, you are good.

Remember, you never leave a company, you leave your manager.
Cons: 1. IBM is still lacking in the compensation department. The payouts are not very competitive as compared to other product companies. For services, it may be at par.
2. Recently, there has been an effort on co-locating the employees and talks of removing 'work from home' policies which is really not required. This actually inconvenience the employees and reduces productivity and has been one of the perks of working in IBM which encourages employees to invest more time in the work.