Company: IBM
Date: 2012-05-28
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

Pros n Cons of working at IBM
Pros: Fellow employees are great to work with. The work is challenging and satisfying.I am treated like a professional (usually). Support for technical careers. Less gas used, less time spent in travel, flexible work hours, etc. Even though IBM is 100 years old, the company still has an innovative culture. The management team also knows the importance of execution. For example, back in 2005, IBM sold off its PC division to Lenovo, which allowed the company more flexibility to focus on better growth areas.

IBM’s acquisition approach also is fairly disciplined, usually focusing on smaller deals. This certainly is contrary to the behavior of many other tech companies, including Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, which have been aggressive with large acquisitions. Generating positive results from such deals, however, can be extremely difficult.

During the past decade, there have been most some huge developments in technology, including the emergence of cloud computing, big data and mobile. Yet these require global infrastructures of datacenters, servers and high-end software. The good news is that IBM is one of the few companies that can provide all of this at scale.

 For decades, IBM has been investing in emerging-market economies. No doubt, they need top-notch technologies to continue their growth.
Cons: Many of IBM's employee's are remote workers. This comes with both pro and con qualities. IBM is such a huge organization that sometimes getting through the red tape to accomplish something is horrible. Costs like health care and commuting keep rising, with no pay raises to even keep things even. IBM keeps cutting costs at the employee's expense, reducing or eliminating reimbursement for legitimate business expenses. Employee recognition has been declining year to year for quite a while.