Company: IBM
Date: 2013-10-06
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Confirmed

Watch Your Back or you WILL be made REDUNDANT!
Pros: Incredible work at home program.  As long as you get your job done management leaves you alone to do it.  Management trusts you to do your job and doesn't micro-manage. 

If you network and are a good brown-noser you will go far.
Cons: Haven't had a raise in 3 years.  Yearly bonuses diminish with every passing year.  Employees need to pay out of pocket from our paychecks more and more every year for healthcare (for less and less coverage).  I am paying over $550 per month just for 80/20 deductible medical and dental coverage for my family of 5.  (AND the 80/20 only kicks in after I reach the $7400 yearly deductible charge).  

The yearly rating/review process is a joke.  The managers are told how many 1s, 2+s, 2s and 3s they can give out.  (Each year, the number of 1s and 2+s is smaller, and the 2s and 3s increase).  The review has nothing to do with how hard you work.  It has to do with how many managers know who you are.  The manager will even TELL you this during your review.  I was told, when the managers all sat down to rank you, not many know who you were so we had to give you a lower rating) WHAT!?!?!?  Shouldn't my manager know what I did during the year (considering I had to write down all my accomplishments in my yearly review) and my salary increase be based off that?  TOTAL SCAM to reduce the amount of money given to employees.

Oh, and the yearly bonuses are a joke too.  Every first line manager is given a pot of money. From that pot of money, they are 'asked' to 'donate' some of that money to the executives.
So, in the end, the employee gets shafted again so the executives line their pockets some more.    This is a dirty little secret that needs to be told.

Now on to the workday:  Because you work from home, IBM piles a lot of work on you.  This is because there aren't enough people around anymore.  IBM tells you 'do more with less', but that's just an excuse.  All the depts are bare bone minimum in terms of headcount, but the work isn't going away.  You just have to do your job and the work of 3 or 4 others that were layed off previously. A typical day is about 12 hours in length.  A vacation day at IBM means you only work a 4 - 6 hour day.  Vacation days are spent catching up on work.

Management leaves you alone to do your job and trusts you will do it, but the flip side is that management doesn't care about you.  It doesn't matter how great a job you do.  You can be an #1 rated employee in your review, but you WILL be layed off if the numbers are right and you meet that magic algorithm number the bean counters have developed. 

Management doesnt care if you have some specialized skill either.  That is inconsequential to saving money.  Management doesn't care if took several years to develop a skill no one else has.  In their ignorant wisdom they feel they can just lay someone off and have your replacement take on the task with 2 weeks of training.

They are so out of touch, they will even ask you "How is the knowledge transfer going..do you have everything you need to perform the job now"  WHAT?!?!?  How does someone know what they don't know after 2 weeks of training.  The guy who was layed off did this job for 7 years before it was handed to me. 

After this last layoff so many experts were let go, the rest of us are floundering around without a clue as to what to do when there are issues.  I guess this is what IBM wants.  They don't care if their customers are sinking now.  They were able to release highly paid workers and their bottom line looks better.  Who cares about those left behind.

IBM has major problems now that are becoming visible to their customers.  The word is getting out.  Newbies are the only ones that are still around to steer the ship as the officers have been thrown overboard.

Good Luck IBM, the job market is tough out there, but I won't stop looking for another job until I find one.  Then you can kiss my middle finger goodbye.  Adios sinking ship!