Company: IBM
Date: 2013-04-04
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Obsessed with process and profit; workers are just a number
Pros: Good benefits package, option to work from home, still some good people about, and lots of opportunity to move around, particularly if you're a manager.
Cons: Here in the UK, IBM is obsessed with offshoring as much of its workforce as it possibly can, with little regard for the impact upon customers (but at least they get their "service" much cheaper). This means that if you're a technician, you've either already bitten the dust via one of IBM's annual redundancy programmes, or the rapidly dwindling numbers of your peers means that you're being stretched ever-more thinly. If you're one of the latter, then you might just be able to cope if only it wasn't for the extraordinary number of (largely non value-add) processes that you're forced to follow and for which you will be penalised if you don't. As for pay rises, forget it. I've been a top performer for each of my 11 years at the company, but I haven't had a pay rise for 5 years. That said, I'm one of the lucky ones; I have colleagues who haven't had a rise for over 10 years.