Company: IBM
Date: 2010-04-14
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: former

IBM - Facing an Imminent Crisis
Pros: Colleagues - as a long time employee of IBM I have found many of my colleagues to be very bright, very motivated and true friends

Skills -You can always find someone with the exact skill that you need to solve any customer problem.

Customers - As an IBM'er you always have an open door to get to customer decision makers and to solve challenging customer problems.
Cons: Middle Management - middle management basically has no comprehension of what IBM's own technology does and how it is used to address customer business problems.  IBM is weighed down by a too many layers of of bureaucratic management who sanitize and distort information that is presented to upper management.  Customers and business partners are incredibly frustrated with IBM's bureaucracy and lack of product knowledge and the lack of responsiveness of IBM management to customer issues.  

Lack of Innovation - IBM has not been an innovator since the days of the IBM 360 mainframe.  What IBM does have is lots of cash.  They tend to wait until it becomes apparent that there is market demand for a new technology and then they go in and buy the biggest or next biggest company in the marketplace and then throw lots of cash at marketing.  IBM has been on a buying binge as a "me too" response to Oracle and HP over the last few years and they have been buying companies and technology and developing offerings that IBM sellers and customers don't understand and can't use.

Senior Management Competence - In my time at IBM, I got to know many of the people now in senior management roles.  They ranged from being truly skilled to breathtakingly incompetent.  Unfortunately, there are far too many individuals who have now been promoted to senior management roles because of who they know rather than their competence.   If you have been paying attention, you will know that IBM has had steadily declining revenues.  IBM has been able to maintains its profits only through constant layoffs and expense reduction initiatives.