Company: IBM
Date: 2016-04-02
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Never, ever, think about working at IBM, unless top management changes
Pros: Used to have many, but now they have all vanished, work life balance which is often touted as a pro is actually a lie.
Cons: There are so many that I won't be able to cover them all, to name a few:

- Work life balance is a lie: It is true that you are allowed to work from your home, but don't expect flexible hours, on the contrary, your manager will expect you to be available 24/7. Didn't answer that call at 12:30 AM after working 48 hours straight? expect to be reprimanded, it happened to me.
- Managers are a joke: IBM made the big mistake of promoting only the best performing salespeople, specially account reps which don't have deep understanding of IBM products and technology, to management (don't get me wrong, some salespeople make great managers, but it is often the exception), this have resulted in management that only thinks about "sell, sell, sell" but doesn't understand the importance of a well defined and designed solution, of excelling at delivery so you get repeat sales. Nowadays customers are leaving because they got tired of buying stuff from IBM that just doesn't work and employees are tired with this "everyone sells" attitude from management. For example, when explaining to a manager why we couldn't sell a solution as he requested, he replied to me: "I am not interested in your technical details, we need to sell".
- Work environment is sad and grim: As a result of poor management and constants layoffs (they are getting more frequent, in some countries even monthly), the work environment is awful, people just doesn't want to work anymore, they aren't motivated, and the few that remain motivated are loosing it quickly.
- The CEO and the VPs have no idea of what to do: Perhaps you have heard of CAMSS, which only three months before was CAMS, and three months before that was Smarter Cities (internally some managers changed CAMSS to ACCESS). My point is, top management keeps changing strategy like changing clothes, and don't get me started on the product mix, it keeps changing, brands names are created and destroyed every quarter, it is chaos, no body knows what the real strategy is anymore.
- Most "management systems" are a cheap Excel spreadsheets: People would expect IBM as a supposed symbol of cutting edge technology to be a dream management systems powerhouse, yet, most things are managed by Excel. Many systems exist like Sugar CRM (internally SalesConnect) but are ignored by stupid managers that know nothing about technology and prefer to use Excel, expect to deliver at least 3 to 5 Excel spreadsheets with the same info, in different layout, to several managers.
- You won't get the tools you need to do your job: Although some people get Macs, that doesn't mean you will get the right tool for the job. For example, if you get a Mac but need something beyond Intranet access, mail and Office tools, you most probably won't be able to do your job because you will need a PC for that, and forget about running a virtual machine because only Windows 7 is allowed inside IBM and you won't be able to get a legal license, those were sold out years ago. If you get a ThinkPad instead, well... prepare yourself for a 30 minute "do nothing" moment every time it wakes up from sleep, it won't matter if it is a state of the art ThinkPad T460, software will be so bloated that you will get blue screens of death every day.