Company: IBM
Date: 2014-11-30
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Lower pay than competitors, uninteresting work, little/no emphasis on career development
Pros: Good name recognition in tech consulting.  If you are looking for work-life balance, you can find it on long-term implementation projects.  A lot of GBS consultants end up transferring to other IBM divisions to reduce travel/workload stress.  This is common and a perk of working for a big company.
Cons: The work is not interesting on long-term implementation projects, but that's GBS's bread and butter.  Strategy is just a foot in the door.  If you want interesting strategy projects, you need to find the right partners and you will spend a lot of time chasing the work.  No matter how GBS positions itself to recruits, it simply isn't seen as a strategy firm by clients or peers.  If it is interesting work, it's usually oversold by a partner (read: terrible work-life balance with minimal assistance/resources because the budget doesn't allow for it).  

From a promotion standpoint, delivery is only half the equation.  The rest is proposals and making sure you work on visible projects with influential partners.  If you're not willing to play the game, you're not going to get promoted.  GBS is always restructuring, so you may have two or three different managers in the same year and never meet the person who is supposed to advocate for you.  That makes building a relationship and getting them invested in your career very difficult.

The pay...well, just look at other consulting firms on Glassdoor.  You'll see the reality.  The fine print is that there were  multiple years when there were no year-end bonuses (despite reported division profits) or raises unless you were top-rated (which usually included literally two people).  However, there are always backdoor channels to get extra pay, like retention bonuses.  Again, you have to ask for it and then it's hush hush so your peers don't get jealous and ask for the same thing.