Company: IBM
Date: 2017-01-02
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Senior

IBM used to be a great company....not anymore
Pros: IBM is a large international company with many divisions giving prospective employees many options to choose from and ample opportunity to work around the world.
Cons: I worked for IBM for 29 years.  The company today is not recognizable compared to the IBM I started with in the 1980s.  IBM has become a hostile place to work.  Upper management lacks integrity and they do not value employees any longer.  They do things to create the illusion that they do, but believe me, they do not.

IBM is run by Finance and IBM cares about their bottom line above all else.  Above their clients.  Above the quality of their products.  And definitely above their employees.  Here are a few examples of working in sales at IBM:

1.  IBM recently reorganized in the US 3 times in 18 months beginning January of 2015.  This realigned sellers (both technical and sales) with clients each time.  Very disruptive. This caused many sellers to have to start over three times in 18 months.  I don't care how good of a seller you are, it is difficult to create pipeline and close deals in a 6 to 12 month period in IT.  So just recently, IBM pulled the performance for the last three 6 month quota periods for all employees.  If a seller or technical resource had two halves, out of the three, where they were below 60% attainment, the employee was fired based on performance with no consideration of the impact of the three reorganizations.  This speaks to my comment about IBM lacking integrity.

2.  IBM is selectively laying people off under a program called "skills for growth".  Business units are instructed to select a % of their org and lay them off with the ability to replace that individually with an outside hire.  This is not performance based at all.  It is a subjective selection based on politics.  Regardless of your track record, performance or history with the company, you can get laid off if you are in the wrong place.  IBM is essentially laying off middle aged resources in exchange for newer outside highers with no justification.

3.  IBM is "over the top" process driven.  To the point that process overrides common sense.  Process is all that upper management sees and it disconnects them from what is really happening in the field with real customers.  Again, IBM is ran by finance.

4.  IBM Management is abusive and hostile to their employees.  Yelling, f-bombs, irrational decisions and direction.  Sellers need to be accountable but IBM has taken it to the extreme in a very destructive way.  

I could go on and on but my advice to anyone looking to join IBM....DON'T.  There are much better tech companies out there that will treat you with dignity.  Also, quotas are not fair or rational and over time IBM will set you up for failure.