Company: IBM
Date: 2010-04-19
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: current

Great company, sometimes too bureaucratic
Pros: Great benefits package, excellent initial compensation, great management and executives, good internal resources (intranet), lots of technical communities, lots of diversity communities
Cons: IBM, being a huge company, has a very rigid promotion structure and it can be difficult to reward employees who excel at their jobs. For example, the promotion cycle runs only once and year and if an employee misses that opportunity for promotion, it is very difficult to receive a promotion out of cycle. A lot of employees move around between companies (i.e. Accenture, KPMG, etc) to speed up the promotion cycle and increase salary more rapidly. Additionally, there is a lot more administrative busy work, certifications, conduct guidelines, etc than you will experience at a smaller, private firm.