Company: IBM
Date: 2009-11-16
Overall rating: 1/5
Employment status: current

No longer the best place to work
Pros: The benefits are good, starting at 3 wks a year plus up to 6 personal choice days.
Cons: You are expected (even though the formal HR policy says not to) to work through your dinner, vacations. You take your laptop everywhere - 24x7. The company is quite matrixed and there is often disagreement about who handles what with sr mgmt deciding that "they" own a tactic, and another sr. mgmt says "he" handles it  -- you get caught in the middle - alot. The group owning the money for a tactic is not the same group implementing the tactic, this is why you see Web pages that don't make sense.  The advertising and direct mail tactic don't align to web pages, as a consumer, you are just "dropped." The best people have been laid off and the people left were personal favorites and not necessarily the right person for the job. Typically, the job was given to them without any training when the experienced person was laid off.  Layoffs have nothing to do with the quality  of work, they just got "too old" for IBM. That's how IBM beats the age discrimination rap, most of the laid off people are over 45 (and subsequently high earners)- there's no getting around that. Turning 50 at IBM is the kiss of death. The best person that was laid off had much experience. IBM has not decided that experience doesn't mean anything and so they keep the inexperienced people, which explains why customers are frequently lost.

-There is no loyalty to the employee. As a result of this, morale is very low, the hallways are quiet, there is no socializing, it's not a fun place to work.