Company: IBM
Date: 2013-09-24
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

What the heck happened?
Pros: I love developing.  I love my job.  Flexible hours.  Comparable pay.  Work with some of the most dedicated, intelligent technical workers in the industry with decades of experience all around you.  Work with people around the world with different cultures...exciting!  10 years ago I would have put 5 stars and had lots to say.  5 years ago it would have been 4 stars and still quite a bit to say.
Cons: When I was young I wanted to be an IBMer.  My parents knew people who were IBMers.  IBM had a reputation of taking care of its own...that's where I wanted to be. That IBM is gone.  There is no loyalty to employees.  I've been through 8 resource actions in the last 10 years.  Some were small..some were very large.  When I started I knew I would retire here.  Now, I don't even know if I'll have a job next month.  It is so distracting and stressful.  The state of the company is reflected in every aspect of our life...all the way to the inability to get pens!  I have to buy my own because they are no longer supplied. 

Working with too many people around the world!  4 different major time zones in one product.  4 different cultures.  Much is lost in the translation resulting in undesirable results.  Quality suffers as a result.  Its not an issue of whether employees from other countries are intelligent enough to do the work its a problem with too much diversity, too much distance and not enough of the right tools to bridge the gaps.  Web and phone meetings only get you so far. 

IBM doesn't know what it wants to be. IBM drove the market in the past and successfully developed their own products.  The IBM of today outsources and scatters their work in too many different places.  Managers do not even know what direction we should be going. 

No real benefits to being an IBMer today.  IBM use to have the best benefits, IBM functions that made their employees feel special, and, if nothing else, you knew you had a job for life.  None of that exists today.  If you want that type of treatment you have to go somewhere else like Google...catered lunches, carnivals, free tickets to whatever, large bonuses,etc. Even the  401k match is lacking compared to other companies.

Use to have a lot of opportunities to move into other areas.  Now the teams are squeezed so hard that everyone is paralyzed with work, managers cannot let you go because they need you and there are no jobs anyway because of all the cuts.