Company: IBM
Date: 2008-10-03
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

Trying to squeeze water from a rock
Pros: IBM has a pretty good benefits program: 401k, good health insurance, some nice on-the-job perks like access to online books, etc. It's not at the Google level with free food and transportation, but it's better than a lot of other companies and government jobs.
Cons: We haven't made our numbers--which are set unreasonably high--in 15 years, giving management an excuse every year to short change our bonuses and raises. Morale in STG is the lowest in the company, for good reason. We're constantly being told that we need to work harder to meet our numbers and be rewarded, but most of us are already working 50-70 hour weeks for pay far below market rates. The real problem is the short-sightedness of management, a common IBM problem. As an example, look at how poorly IBM's PC business did compared to Dell in the computer boom era. And yet IBM invented the PC! Now IBM mainframes and microelectronics are going down the same path. So sad.