Company: IBM
Date: 2014-06-17
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Opportunities, even now when IBM is struggling to find its way
Pros: Huge reach means that there's lots of interesting work (if you push yourself to find it).  High quality of people in project teams and (on the whole) a genuine culture of respecting the individual.   IBM can be great if you find the right people (IBMers and clients) to work with and awful if you don't.
Cons: Over-reliance on cost cutting has over many years taken its toll.  Important things are done on a shoe string.   The staff appraisal system is dishonest, simplistic and counter-productive. Everyone sees it as a way just to bring costs down without regard for contribution.  It has nothing to do with client success. Put simply, non-executive employees don't share in the success of the company at all.  Every year the appraisal system produces angry colleagues who either leave suddenly, or who spread disenchantment and fear.  The long term effects of this will undermine the pros listed above.

Working on projects with off-shored resources is usually awful.  There's a massive disconnect between teams in India and clients in Europe.  You have to compensate for the flaws in off-shore teams (apparently thrown together at random) with additional effort and even then it's usually not enough.  Almost everyone I have worked with from India wants to leave, and it shows.