Company: IBM
Date: 2014-03-29
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

Excellent people, management without conscience or a clue
Pros: Benefits are very comprehensive, including work-from-home for many positions. Vacation time is decent and overtime is reasonable (it happens, but not excessively). Colleagues tend to be smart, and low-level management (first and second line) tend to be good.
Cons: IBM has been working as hard as it can for a decade to destroy its internal talent and expertise. Upper management actively suppresses any contrary views or problems from bubbling up the management chain. US workforce has shrunk breathtakingly, there is no career advancement or even lateral movement, reorganizations are *constant*, and education and development is either non-existant or taken away with the next reorg. Massive outsourcing with no care taken for quality of hires. Then there's the constant selling off of divisions (Global Network, Network Services, Hard Drives, PC's, Intel Servers - and that's just during my tenure). New companies are acquired constantly but never integrated into a cohesive whole, leaving a mishmash of overlapping pieces that do nothing to benefit each other; many ultimately decay into nothing and vanish. Strategy shifts constantly, organizations, products, and offerings rename rather than reform or improve. I honestly doubt there will be anything left of this company within a decade.

On a personal level, compensation is significantly below-market. Bonuses (aka "variable pay"; project bonuses disappeared a decade ago) are consistently below 2% even for top performers (annual rating of 2+). Salary increases are non-existant. My gross pay went up less than 3% total over a period of five years, and 70% of my years there increases trailed inflation (i.e., real income dropped).