Company: IBM
Date: 2013-07-11
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

No respect for the individual
Pros: Smart colleagues in the technical area
Cons: No rewards, no recognition, constant paranoia about future layoffs, lack of strategic direction, too many conference calls, work overload, short term focus, no career management except for the very few elite.
When I started at IBM 15 years ago it was a decent place to work.  I have always thought that IBM does not focus on training employees enough and the pressure is place on the individual to get up to speed, whether it be on software applications, internal systems or IBM's products and services.  Fortunately I am a quick study so I always muddled through the learning curves.
Over the past 3 years IBM has become an intolerable place to work. Upper management is focused on quarterly results and does not outline any strategic vision or direction. It is left to the senior individual contributors to try to figure out what to do and how to prioritize the dizzying workload.  There is a constant paranoia over future layoffs and management almost seems to "enjoy" the power that the fear creates.  Unfortunately for my co-workers and IBM customers the fear creates a very inefficient and unproductive work environment.  The company is run via SameTIme (instant messaging) and conference calls.  It is not unusual to be on 8+ hours of conference calls a day and it is frowned upon if you decline a conference call.  Rarely are agendas sent out in advance or conference calls summarized with action items, so everyone spends all day on the phone and on email/SameTime without much meaningful work getting done. This "ADD" culture seems to be encouraged while thoughtful problem solving seems to be discouraged.  At a company whose slogan for many years was "THINK" I can tell you that there isn't much thinking going on except about how to cut costs and move jobs overseas.