Pros

Talented employees - coworkers are supportive and willing to provide guidance when asked. The IBM Club provides opportunities to network as well as provide work/life balance. Most of my connections with IBMers are with people who were not in my department/project.

The ability to use flex time/telecommute is a real plus. No fixed number of sick days - no, you can't have a cold for a month, but when you're sick, stay home (statistics say fewer sick days are actually taken with this policy).

Cons

The employee review process. Instead of being rated against your own commitments, you're rated against your "peers" in your job band. Many of these peers have different job responsibilities that aren't an "apples for apples" match. You can meet all of your management approved goals for the year and still receive a low rating.

The "relative contribution" element of the employee review creates competition among coworkers, and if business conditions limit the opportunities available on a project, senior engineers can further limit these opportunities by taking on tasks that lower bands could assume - they need to in order to improve their own "relative contribution".

Advice to Senior Management

Go back to a review system where employees work with their managers to define their goals, and are rated based on how well they met those goals - not in comparison with what their peers are doing.