IBM Reviews in Atlanta, GA Area

Pros

- Unparalled opportunities and breadth of experience

Cons

- Too much red tape
- Managers are way too busy all the time to focus on their employees

Advice to Senior Management

Streamline and eliminate some of the administrative overhead

Pros

IBM offers a good opportunity to learn, grow, and develop your skills. Management is generally supportive and caring but sometimes not given enough authority to be able to effect necessary change.

Cons

A classic problem is the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. There are many instances where different business units within IBM were given conflicting or competitive goals.

Pros

Flexibility of work location and work from home on Fridays.

Cons

Strategy consulting group does 2% strategy work 98% IT consulting.

Pros

Great brand that is respected in market place.
Supplemental education opportunities that can be managed and tracked by their employees

Cons

An abundance of older workers which can create a backlog for promotions. Very difficult to move to jobs that are outside of your existing department.

Advice to Senior Management

Start opening the avenues of communication to improve the opportunities for employees to find employment in other departments to improve job satisfaction.

Pros

I joined IBM as a result of an acquisition. I found the best reason to work for IBM is the option of (in some cases) working from home. This meant for me, that I could work 24/7 without interrutptions. The IBM Intra-Net web-site is awesome, in that it offers training for learning IBM's standards, policies, terminology and acceptable methodologies. Each Manager is expected to own its procurement, asset and administrative operations. IBM has an internal Award program where fellow IBM'rs can reward you for assisting through-out the year with a limit of 3 per year. You can choose awesome gifts/offers from the IBM web-site.

Cons

Legacy IBM'rs are for the most part professionals at utilizing the newcomer's knowledge for their benefit. At IBM, the intra-net sites are designed for any employee to procure, inquire, and follow through with individual as well as team projects. Well, the legacy IBM'r will not train the newcomer, but will wait for the newcomer to learn his or her way and then follow up with that newcomer who is bullied/used to procure their product, help the legacy IBM'r to reach their goals (while the newcomer's goals are not met). If the legacy IBM'r is not assisted, they will escalate to management until you not just assist them, but take on their project only to re-suface at the end of the project to take it off your hands. You are then to account for why your own projects are behind. At this point you work 24/7 to stay abreast of your work. I would like to fore-warn any IBM acquisitioned company employee/manager/director, no matter how great you are with burning the candle at both ends to get the job done, hard work, due diligence, following processes and procedures, if IBM has someone in line for your job whether out-sourcing to India, China, or Boulder Colorado, you will have to start to look elsewhere for work. IBM can acquisition a whole company simly to acquire what some may deem a small hub and then to dismantle departments until all is gne and the hub to be re-named giving it a new iBM-related Acronym. AS you and your company applicastions will be sun-setted into the wild BLUE Yonder!!!!

Advice to Senior Management

IBM Management should stop sugar-coating acquisitioned company employees, which is designed to retain and not scare the acquisitioned company employees until IBM is ready to let them go. Upon acquisitioning a company, IBM can start to learn the culture of that company to avoid bullying there way to obtain information otherwise could have been readily available to them. This way, the employees won't be ready to quit before you obtain necessary information from employees left behind for the clean-up. As a result of this action, IBM is mis-informed, due to the last employees and retained to the end-of acquistion work-a-bees who are forced to research internal vendor, financial and asset information. IBM just writes it off as losses in the end. In short, management can stand to learn the culture by listening and watching the employee to keep the company steady-state and respect the newly acquitioned company's employees by not treating them in a condescending manner. Be forth-coming an as honest as possible without the bullying Please.

Pros

Fairly good pay, benefits and a very good match on the 401k. Compensation is average for a very big company.

Cons

Process trumps creativity. Management is much more concerned with paperwork than innovation. Professional growth is more about filling out your review than doing your job.

Pros

Good work life balance, smart co workers, good benefits

Cons

Slow paced environment, lots of beurocracy

Advice to Senior Management

Do communicate with you employees more often and get the environment more dynamic and interesting for technical people.

Pros

flexibility
brand recognition
job opportunity
great solution offerings
proud to be an IBMer
allows for telecommuting

Cons

too political
pay scale unequal
too many people
minimal women in high management

Pros

Challeging projects, flexible work environment

Cons

No Carrer Advancement, No Pay raises, Inefficient offshore teams

Advice to Senior Management

Should respect technical resources rather than just project managers

Pros

Good benefits, decent salary, smart employees - as a traveling consultant you also get to keep your travel points / rewards.

Cons

Horrible bureaucracy, I know because I also worked in government & IBM has more bureaucracy than they do! Horrible performance review system - it's jury rigged from the beginning of the year. Built in overtime which as a "professional" you don't get paid for. (e.g. utilization targets over 100%). People get credit for doing nothing on projects - just need to be a manager somehow connected to it. You get the idea...

Advice to Senior Management

Need to redo performance review system, invest in employees and don't just use them until they're too expensive & then fire them for new college grads or offshore resources. Build loyalty with your employees.