Company: IBM
Date: 2014-07-06
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

IBM quickly going down the toilet
Pros: 1.  Almost every company in the US has some sort of relationship with IBM, so each new sales opportunity brings instant relationships - mostly positive.   
2.  IBM's size and long standing reputation and positive reviews by independent rating agencies (Gartner, Forrester, etc) make IBM an almost automatic finalist for consideration as a consulting or IT partner.  
3.   The people are simply outstanding.
Cons: 1.   The biggest and worst problem at IBM is laser focus on achieving financial metrics regardless of the means to get there.   The new leadership team is so focused on making quarter over quarter growth numbers and year over year growth numbers that they are doing unnatural things that appear to help the numbers but anger clients and staff and hurt the business both short term and long term.  Some Examples:
     a.   Running a near zero bench in a growing economy is one sure way to anger clients and causes DE issues (an IBM term for "Delivery Excellence")
     b.  The "no subs" policy ignores the reality of the economic market and taken together with a. above, form a toxic mix which disappoints clients and causes them to wonder why they picked IBM in the first place.
     c.   Putting cost savings methods directly on the heads of the employees - including such stupid things as i. once a year 401K matching (which is a clever prelude to doing away with matching altogether);  ii. no raises or bonuses;  iii.  too-frequent RAs (Resource Actions) - with little or no severance pay, even for very senior employees (a Partner friend of mine got laid off and got two weeks severance!!!);  iv. draconian travel policies (including the renting of only sub-sub-compact cars and only coach travel for overseas flights).
     d.  Making stupid deals with clients at the end of quarters just to bolster signings - deals that do not meet minimum IBM standards are being allowed at or near the end of quarters, regardless of risk or economics, simply to add to backlog and make the numbers look better.   These deals - and I have seen many recently - will come back to bite IBM in the butt in future quarters as IBM begins to experience DE issues and massive write offs.    This last point together with a. and b. above, are a sure-fire way to ruin IBM's reputation in the marketplace.  
     e.   Making unwise M&A transactions which help margin but makes IBM less competitive in the marketplace.   The most recent example is the Concentrix spin off.   A low margin business for sure, but absolutely necessary for a Tier 1 service provider to be in the BPO business.   By spinning this off, IBM gets to have higher margins overall, but gives up a very key market and can no longer be called a "full services" Tier 1 provider.