Company: IBM
Date: 2012-05-23
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Spirit-crushing... really blue about "Big Blue"
Pros: In my region it is a reputable company.
If you're a good politician, there are is an enormous variety of roles in many different divisions that you can move to.
If you're interested in experiencing different cultures, it is very diverse in some ways and if you like to travel (and are a good poitician) you can avail of opportunities to work in other countries.
Cons: IBM only cares about earnings per share. Don't for a second believe that any of their core values or social responsibility, work-life etc policies will apply to you if you work there! There is a reason that IBM is highest profit IT services company but doesn't appear in any "best company to work for" list.

In order to be on top of 80% of your work, you'ill put in 10 to 14 hrs/day in my region. 100% on top of things means an extra 6 to 8 hours on the weekend. To be proactive on more than a few of the totally critical issues, you'll spend 14+ hrs of the weekend working.

Thie critical projects/tasks you work on will be totally under-resourced so you can't take leave as if you miss delivery date it will be career limiting. Then you'll be told that you haven't take your leave by year end so you will lose the leave - not get paid out or anyuthing, it just disappears! So you will delay leave in order to deliver for IBM, you'll be exhausted, lose your social life, be stressed to breaking point so that you can be recognised and move up, but instead your efforts will be unrecognised in any meaningful way, and your leave will be taken away when you need it most.

...and it's getting worse because IBM's new belief is that the cheapest resource is best resource, so when an experienced colleague leaves, they are replaced with the cheapest option usually at an India or Eastern Europe hub. Fine to train up new people on your team, but when *every* new person is a totally new to the workplace, their role and IBM, and doesn't stay long as there is no increase... it places a huge support burden on the dwindling experienced team members (who are still doing their own 10 hr/day job!) When you explain this to your manager, he/she will ignore it as most managers are mostly politicians so don't want to take up a cause unpopular with Execs, and the few that do speak up "coincidentally" don't progress in their careers.

In addition to educating most of your team, you will have hopeless internal services support as those service hubs are similarly staffed & have a massive rate of attrition. In some cases, their responses are so far off the mark that it is easier to take the time to ask colleagues in your network if they had this issue ands how to solve it (now YOU're taking time from your colleagues that they can't afford). If there was any real focus on retaining resources in the hubs so we had experienced support , everyone could be more productive in their own roles.

Maybe when IBM implodes and can no longer maintain the facade of an innovative caring company, the execs will realise that the idea of cheap resources and only caring about the $$$ CAN be taken way too far.