Company: IBM
Date: 2019-06-05
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Deprecating Warship
Pros: IBM has a long history of being a pioneer; a company that truly set the bar for delivering a) quality services to clients, b) revolutionary products for the industry, and c) breakthrough innovations and contributions to research. 

This rich history still stands, and the company has an arsenal of patents and technologies that it can potentially tap on.

There's also good talent in the organisation, but unfortunately, stifled and highly underutilized.
Cons: This is a company that needs a change in not just management, but mentality. 

They've missed several big tech waves now, and not for lack of trying - if there's any product/service that has made fortunes for recent B2B tech startups, you can bet that IBM had at least one internal project doing the exact same thing. The difference being that the IBM environment usually kills innovation instead of rewarding it. Management knows very little about what are the strategic next steps to take, and are usually 1-2 years late to almost any party.

The time-delay, in a large part, is because at its heart, IBM is not a tech company. It might have been in the past, but what stands now is the bare facade of a tech company, with the inner workings of a sales organisation. Decision-making is handled by people largely unfamiliar with technology trends, and is not just reactive to the market, it's late, extremely late. And then executed in the worst manner possible with teams that care more about self-aggrandizing themselves rather than good internal coordination. It's no surprise that customers and the market both are confounded. Not to worry, the employees are equally clueless. 

A warning to anyone joining in a decision-making or strategic position - you and your analytical mind will suffer in this company. 

A warning to anyone joining in a technical position - you will think you're being given meaningful work, but after 2 years of solving some of the toughest problems, you will realise your product has been shelved for no apparent reason. 3 years later it will be launched successfully by a startup that will make millions, while your resume would have moved on in a direction you never imagined or wanted.