Company: IBM
Date: 2020-05-10
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Confirmed

One of the best Service-based MNCs, but misused by middle management
Pros: 1. Lots of opportunities - There are hell lot of opportunities inside IBM, they are using and working on almost all the technologies in the world
2. Premium clients - We get the opportunity to work with some of the best clients in the world
3. Leaves - Unlimited sick and casual leaves and mostly unlimited work from home.
4. Pay - Mostly decent pay (if the project is good)
5. Benefits - Overtime benefits, overtime meals reimbursement, weekend meals reimbursement etc.
6. Exposure - We will get the opportunity to work in cross cultural and cross timezone teams which is both interesting and challenging.
7. Other benefits - Year end bonus, quarterly market share, chauffeur reimbursement for higher bands, fuel reimbursement etc.
8. Work timing - 5 workdays/week and mostly 8-9 hours/day.
9. Learning - One of the best employee training online facility.
10. Managers - Few of the managers are exceptional, especially European guys. It will be a great learning opportunity.
11. Work-Life Balance - Some projects give you excellent Work-life balance. You just need to finish your work. No one cares from where, when and how long. 

So basically if everything is as per the written rule book, this is the best company we can work on. There are lots of benefits, listing of all of them here will overflow the page.
Cons: Most the pros will happen if and only if your manager is very good. For instance I have worked in a project where managers used to make everyone work on all weekends and extended hours upto 11 hours per day, rarely giving them the entitled overtime benefits. Even the year end reviews were biased based on regional politics, and even worst on how long people are spending extra in office after the stipulated time, for which the managers fondly call "availability". It was common for people who work smart to get less ratings compared to those sit in office for 12 hours without doing any job. This is more common on Indian managers (very few had this habit) whose aim is to improve billing by making everyone work overtime and weekends even if there isn't any need. So if you are lucky enough to be assigned to such a project, then there will not be anyone to help you out other than looking for a jump.

Another issue is that the hike and market share is decided by the managers themselves and it just requires a formal sign-off by the HR. So basically in India, most of the times, it is based on your language, and non-professional skills.

In some project, Work-Life balance goes for a toss. You might end up spending upto 70 hours per week in office.

Onsite opportunities - Again might depend on how your treat your manager rather than how well you did your work.

Bottomline is that all the policies of such a great and old company is sometimes being misused by few Indian middle management for their personal gains, resulting in the company losing some outstanding talent.