Company: IBM
Date: 2014-08-05
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Complex but credible process driven company with more potential
Pros: 1) Market credibility, breadth and depth of capabilities, historical position and pride you feel as as an employee of a respected American corporate icon
2) Opportunities to work on projects that are groundbreaking, with extremely smart people if you are adept at working the complex and entrenched political system.
3) Competitive salary/bonus structures for leadership roles.
4) Work/Life balance
5) Potential training opportunities if given time out of field to pursue
6) Lots of resources available if you know where to look and who/how to ask.
7) Name recognition and respect for IBM and former employees with prospective employers after departure
Cons: 1) Scale and complexity, lots of layered decision-making and duplication of effort..silos
2) Competing internal interests, quarterly focus, unwillingness to take risks and constant change, makes the company miss opportunities.
3) Weekly company wide "cadence" creates a sense of micro-management with little value-add to the selling process.
4) Tendency for employees to be pigeon-holed in one particular role makes it challenging to  grow career capabilities and can lead to burn-out and declining performance in that specific role.
5) Career trajectory is dependent mostly on the individual employee and having continuity of executive sponsorship...see risk aversion and change culture impact.
6) Hiring/Firing decisions are based very much on "what have you done for me lately" culture as opposed to recognizing and placing employees in responsible roles that are challenging but consistent with their key strengths, interests and capabilities.  From an HR perspective, "Needs of the business" appears to be based only on the macro demand forecast as opposed to accurately identifying and refining the talent available and mapping it to opportunity accordingly.