Company: IBM
Date: 2021-04-21
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Some good, some bad
Pros: - Benefits are good - health insurance and family leave is some of the best I've come across in the US
- Exposure to technology and projects that have a lot of real-life use cases and global impact
- The majority of the people at the ground level were some of the smartest, most interesting, passionate and enjoyable people to work with
- Lots of opportunities and resources for self-driven learning
Cons: - Compensation was VERY low compared to market and then didn't increase much over the years, regardless of performance (negotiate well when you first come in, because it pay won't move much once you're here unless you have a manager who is really willing to go to bat for you)
- Everybody in the org was massively overworked - most people were doing a team's worth of work and we were constantly told there was no budget to expand resource, yet every little project was a priority; flexibility was good (though this varied from team to team) but work-life balance was non-existent
- No job security - layoffs happened en masse across the company and always loomed
- Lots of interoffice politics and HR drama played more of a role in career progression than skill or accomplishment which led to people running teams or holding roles they were unqualified for
- No stability within the org - new VPs and figureheads were constantly cycling through on a yearly basis - each with different priorities and direction - and constantly rearranging teams which led to not a lot getting accomplished on a long-term basis
- Career development was all over the place from manager to manager - though in the past couple of years there was a big push for more internal movement, it wasn't implemented consistently across the board; a lot of managers were too overwhelmed with their own tasks to spend much time really managing and developing employees