Company: IBM
Date: 2008-06-17
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

has its pros and cons, but overall worth staying
Pros: The people I work with are great - I've made some of my best friends here. The company is also amenable with working remotely, which is great, considering the gas prices. The benfits are pretty good, compared to family/friends working elsewhere. My manager is good with the work/life balance, and he generally fights for his employees (though many other mgrs don't). There are smart people that I work with who are usually available to help out with problems, to get your work done.
Cons: As in other reviews, there is a lot of bureaucracy to get through. Very process oriented, which is both good and bad, but many times hinders your ability to do your work. A lot of times you don't see the reasoning/logic behind executive decisions. Budgets are so tight, it's hard to get things you need to do your job. I spend countless hours trying to fix my laptop, and because it's not my time yet, I can't get a new one that wouldn't crash as often.  Morale is pretty low, and has been for a while - you work really hard, but don't really get any recognition. Sadly, it doesn't seem like there's any real effort to help that, and as such, I see a lot of turnover.  At the start of my career, I was able to take classes and learn, but now, classes are all but extinct, and the few that are there are only available as online courses. It also seems that lately there's a lot of turf wars - people aren't as willing to help you or let you help with a project for fear of being replaced or something. So the focus on education and knowledge sharing has definitely lessened. The pay raises have also been pretty meager - we're told that the company has done awesome, and yet the raises are less than the year before. It doesn't even cover inflation. It's also not as easy to explore other areas within the company, if you're not sure you're headed in the right direction.