Company: IBM
Date: 2008-09-08
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current

Challenging problems and smart colleagues
Pros: IBM poses challenging problems to its employees and you get to work with smart colleagues to solve the problems.  The pay and benefits are good.  The company seems serious about balancing work and family time, although like any high tech company, there are times when the job can become all-consuming.  The sheer size and aggregate capabilities of IBM's employee base is staggering... when they are applied effectively.  Few companies can attack problems of the scale that IBM can.  Several times in its history, IBM has re-invented itself to adapt to changing business and technical circumstances.   Overall, it seems like a good place to work.
Cons: As might be expected for a company the size of IBM (390,000 employees at last count), there is a large amount of bureaucracy and bureaucratic thinking.  Often the bureaucracy can create barriers to innovation, which leads to stagnant product releases.  Upper management is very focused on hitting short to medium term financial goals, which although positive in many ways (challenging employees to think creatively) also leads to making some business decisions that are good in the short term but not in the long term.  Basically, IBM's sheer size is both its greatest asset and the greatest challenge faced by prospective employees.