Company: IBM
Date: 2017-09-12
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Pros and Cons of working for IBM Corporation
Pros: IBM Corporation has transformed into a company focused on Cognitive and Cloud solutions.  The company has embraced open source software such Ubuntu server, CentOS server, xCAT server, and OpenStack in its  solutions.  In addition, the business introduces employees to various technologies such as InfiniBand, SAS, Fibre channel, virtualization, automation environments (Robot, Chef, Puppet, Jenkins server), and Cloud services (Watson).  As an employee, first line managers have provided flexibility in work schedules to handle personal matters.
Cons: Vertical career growth in several business units is slow process.  Employees need to actively seek out opportunities in key growth areas within company to avoid getting locked into low growth projects and eventually laid off.  Although the company provides exposure to many technologies, aggressive schedules and working many projects/hours limits employees time to explore and gain deep understanding of new technologies.  Some managers provide flexibility for employees to address family matters.  However, flexibility and work-life balance aren't the same.  Engineers and technical positions should anticipate long hours and working on weekends.