Company: IBM
Date: 2016-07-31
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

My career went backwards here
Pros: Brand name, constant change, nothing else really
Cons: 1. No work life balance. Accounts managed by IBM people are really badly managed with people working 18 hour days and weekends (no overtime pay if you are band 8 and above)
2. Career progression is almost impossible in a company that is rapidly declining. Also you have to write pages of a 'promotion case' as if you are a lawyer. The wierdest promotion process ever.
3. There is no stability whatsoever. You may get a good role and 6 months later, the entire account is lost to competition or customers simply too agitated with IBM's old fashioned software and mismanagement to retain them. So you keep moving every 6 months and living in hotels without any personal life.
4. Ficticious transformation. IBM have been 'focussing' on transforming due to 17 quarters of declining revenue across the world. UK and US are the most declining. But if you have skills in the technologies they are 'focussing' on, they have no roles in them. Very strange to be part of this ficticious transformation.
5. Management. The senior managers are afraid. Very afraid. The axe of layoffs can fall on anyone anytime due to declining business. So instead of focussing on the career development of people they are managing, the managers focus on how not to get layed off themselves.
6. Culture. A very 'scared' population of employees who live and work in fear. This is not a culture of growth.
7. Not your father's IBM. In my case this is literally true. He is ashamed to hear of things going on in the IBM of today.