Company: IBM
Date: 2012-06-15
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Corporate scrooges and unending work processes make the IBM workplace painful to endure
Pros: Some opportunities to work with interesting customer and projects, good colleagues. Good opportunities to learn (web based training, mostly on your own time).
Cons: Company accountants rule everything. Cost cutting is the only rule for everything, irrespective of the cost in productivity, morale, turnover. IBM will no longer even buy a computer monitor for your desk- forcing you to use the tiny 14" screen on your "standard issue" laptop (yes they still make them that small, and no you are not allowed to even pay extra yourself to upgrade it to something reasonable). There is no coffee provided on site-  not even paper/plastic cups provided for water! At one site I visit there are no rubbish bins under the desks, so IBM saves on the cost of cleaners.

The current employee performance rating system is a "forced distribution system" which takes global performance in your division, and no matter what your local team's performance mandates to your direct manager a percentage of people in your team who *must* be rated as unsatisfactory (too bad if you did an OK job, just take your turn at being told your 60 hour weeks were "unsatisfactory"). There is a fixed "skip" percentage each quarter who must be paid none of their "at risk" pay component (note this is  NOT a bonus, it is supposed to be part of your pay, this is "skipped" for the unlucky recipients of an unsatisfactory rating).

Also be prepared to take on IBM's financial risks with a mandatory corporate credit card that is actually your personal liability- so if IBM does not pay your expense claims for some reason, it can affect your personal credit rating.  If you do get the chance to travel, be happy with a "per diem" fixed expense reimbursement that has not gone up in 20 years, and might cover continental breakfast in the hotel, but won't stretch to a modest room service dinner in the hotel chosen for you by IBM. No, you'll be out walking the street in the rain searching for a McDonalds.

Longer-term employees are gradually pushed down the salary scales due to rare/nonexistent pay increases (my previous manager told be that if I left he would be able to offer $50K extra to rehire a person of similar experience).

Education is possible, mostly if you do web-based training in your own personal time. You will also be likely forced to go on courses that are of little practical use, in order to meet some mandatory metric of education attendance decreed globally by someone who knows nothing about what you actually need. When you ask for budget to attend a course that is actually of direct use and benefit in your role, it will be near impossible to get budget to attend.

If you are going into sales, prepare to be micro-managed with spreadsheets and sales data to be entered for everything, the number of phone calls you make to be measured as a "success metric", and to have to review the same sales opportunities multiple times with different managers ("cadence" calls). Leaving little time to actually work with clients.

If you choose to work at IBM, recognise that you should be in it for the short term- even though you may get a decent salary on joining to entice you in, you will not get regular pay rises, and the "on target earnings" you are promised are unlikely to be achieved, let alone over-achieved. Be prepared to be "nickel and dimed" to death, with cost savings gone mad.

Don't treat it as a career and you will be OK- just grin and bear the idiocy of the accounting scrooges, the interminable complex processes, the unfair and randomly distributed poor performance ratings (which IBM can't/won't report on in a job reference anyway), take a few years of OK then substandard pay, then use IBM as a reference and get out and find a place that is fun to work in, where the company values you.