Company: IBM
Date: 2014-10-31
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Local team is awesome, entire company is not
Pros: The local people management here in Germany is, what I have experienced, VERY good. The two first-line managers I have had here were both very understanding and interested in ME not in a working resource. I have always enjoyed enourmous freedom be it working hours, home office, or hacking side-projects. This was due to mutual trust. Good stuff.
The fellow workers are very skilled to extremely skilled and the local people-to-people climate is usually pretty good.
Work is more "development" than "research and development" as the sign in front of the house says. But there can be interesting research aspects every now and then. The actual kind of work you do, of course, depends a lot on the product you work on. But generally it is hard core IT and usually fun.
Cons: Top level management is focused on their bonus and sees you as an annoying costly resource. Management is done without a lot of sense of realism ("build the best product in the world in two days"). Dilbert comics are very commonly glued to office doors, that should say it all. Also colleagues in America and India are sometimes capable and often not.
Pay is definitely not above average. Bonuses and all kinds of goodies are virtually non-existent, as soon as they cost money. Not infrequently, local managers pay for things (grill parties, e.g.) personally. For example, we had a wonderful team hiking weekend - payed by ourselves.