Company: IBM
Date: 2014-05-29
Overall rating: 4/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Confirmed

Overall, my experience at IBM was very good.  It was a great place to begin a consulting career.
Pros: Mostly smart, hard-working individuals work as consultants at IBM.  The company name opens a lot of doors and provides instant credibility.  There is a lot of room to grow and if you work for the right people, you will be given opportunities.
Cons: The work-life balance is OK as far as consulting goes.  You work hard, but most people at the company do as well.  The compensation is a little below average from what I can tell.  With respect to training, there are a lot of online training resources available, but in-person, in-class training is very limited and is the first thing to be cut when the economy goes south.

As with most consultancies, the major emphasis is on "utilization," which more experienced consultants may be able to affect, but entry-level ones have very little power over, so this can be frustrating.

My biggest beef with IBM is that it is a constantly changing environment in the sense that there always seems to be a re-organization going on so it is hard for employees to understand how they fit in.  Also, I do not believe they truly understand/appreciate strategy consulting.  They know IT strategy, but not pure strategy because they focus on big, long-term, multi-year contracts, which is not how strategy consulting works.