Company: IBM
Date: 2018-09-01
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Confirmed

Not Your Employer For Life
Pros: Bragging Rights -  People know IBM every where in the world.  It is one of the top IT companies to work for.   Putting it's name in your resume makes you look like a top gun so salary negotiations are easier when moving out of IBM.  Other companies always wants to pirate you.

Pay and Bonuses - Can be competitive depending how you plan your cards.  You have to be aggressive in what you want.  Otherwise, you will get 1% - 2% pay rise only like everybody does.  Bonus rates are standard, but I get 3 in a year.

Network of IT Guru - They have plenty and can be your mentor if you made a good impression (like you're not going to be a waste of time mentee).  

Learning Opportunities -  Learning on the ground with a bunch of seasoned IT professionals that are best in their job - is priceless!

Travel - IBM can send me to business travels wherever my expertise is needed.  No cash bond for these travels.

Challenge at Work - It is never boring.  There are many things you can learn to do or volunteer to do.  You can hop to any areas of interest considering your manager will support you in your career plans.
Cons: Job Stability - It is always good when you are clocking to a project.  The moment you become a cost or put to bench for reasons you as an individual cannot control (like business slow down), it will not matter if you are a consistent top performer since you joined the company.  You will be shown the door.  It's business.  They are generous in separation pay though, but it still is annoying.

Traditional -  You will feel it and experience it the moment you join the company.

Being an "IT Company" - Sells automation and integration to clients but lacks this in internal IBM processes and tools.   Like when you need to clock your week, you will have to do that to 3 other tools because those tools are not integrated to each other.   In some cases, there are no tool present for a certain process so hello manual tracking and monitoring. When I joined IBM in 2013 the joke was 'IBM = It's Better Manual'

Workforce Management - Contracts are signed with the client but no resources to support the contract.  There is an internal Global process that was meant to control resource spending.  There are many horror stories due to this process and the people on the ground are expected to manage the client when it is not really them causing the delay.  It's the global process that is causing the delay.  However, this not true to all business units in IBM..  just the one with the most revenue (GTS). 


Certifications - it is not a company that will support you to be certified at expert level.  Most they can do is foundation level, which all other competitors can do.  Year-on-year there is no budget for certifications.

Work-Life Balance - What is this?  Can you see this in Supermarket?