Company: IBM
Date: 2010-05-19
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current

IBM - oh dear.
Pros: Work from home, though this can leave employees isolated.
A lot of highly-skilled colleagues.
Cons: No work-life balance.
No, or minimal, pay rises (3% max).  Staff go for 7,  8, 9 years with zero pay rises.
Very low morale.  At an all time low in the UK.
Zero training budget.
No job security.  Jobs in the UK are being shipped to India/Hungary/South Africa/Poland.  This has gone on for years, and is continuing.  This has led to the....
CULTURE OF FEAR - ie. I must work every hour God sends, and must work longer than the next guy, otherwise I might lose my job in the next round of job cuts.
Crazy appraisal system, with forced quotas for PBC 2 / 3 ratings.  PBC 2 and 3 means zero pay rise, and probable redundancy.  At least 50% of the workforce get these ratings.
Abuse of disciplinary process to "manage poor performers".  (ie. disciplining people who were given poor appraisals because of forced PBC quotas).
Eroding benefits.  The UK final salary pension scheme has just been closed for people who have paid into it for decades.  
Greed of upper management.  Sam doubled his pension pot to $40M in 2009.
Ineptitude - process is king in IBM, and the processes often don't work.
No vision.  IBM is boosting profit at a time of decreased revenue, by cutting costs.  Through job cuts, it is hacking away at its skills base and eroding staff morale.  IBM is heading for a big fall.