IBM Reviews in Atlanta, GA Area

Pros

Good salary
Great benefits
Access to a lot of different skill sets
Flexible hours as well as work from home opportunities

Cons

Senior Management rotation was high.
Long term strategic roadmap was non-existant
Development of the employees was a priority yet funding not available
Extremely frugal with budget and resource cuts whenever a goal is not met

Advice to Senior Management

Treat people like people rather than a pool of resources that you can toss around like a rag doll. Develop a realistic strategy before holding people accountable for your unrealistic goals

Pros

Alot of good people still work for IBM.

Cons

You will be over-worked and under-compensated unless you are "favored".

Advice to Senior Management

IBM is too heavy in management and too far away from customers and the people who deal with customers.

Pros

IBM has that aura of being a great place to work. The near collapse of the company during the 1980's tarnished that image, and experience folks understand the realities of both the luster and the rust.

In a company of 300,000 I would be foolish to try and depict the overall company "image", however with more than seven years of experience in the software sales segment of the business I saw some general (negitive) trends.

In order to reduce operating costs a large percentage of the employees work from home. Many teams are comprised of staff scattered around the globe, which makes building work relationship more difficult. Conversely this structure provides a lot of schedule flexibility.

Cons

In looking at any position within IBM one must evaluate whether the position has requirements to exist where ever you are located. Ongoing cost cutting efforts may well eliminate your position or ship the position offshore (in the long term).
There are annual efforts to reduce the bottom n% (5-15%) of low performers acrosss the company. If you are in a team of superstars, the team will loose their assigned percentage - regardless of the impact.
In order to achieve continued growth, the company buys a lot of smaller companies. If you are working in an area of the business that has been enhanced throough a purchase, you risk being cast aside once the new venture comes on-line.

Advice to Senior Management

Any idiot can continue to reduce costs in a company of IBM's size. It takes leadership and vision and commitment to grow the business and the basic need for a company's products and services. How many layers of management are between the individual employee and Sam?

Pros

Great group of people! I loved my team!

Cons

Politics! Everything was always hush hush until it hit the fan.

Advice to Senior Management

Diversity is needed throughout management inside and out!

Pros

Outstanding respect for the individual

Cons

Difficult to get major improvements made

Advice to Senior Management

Continue Engaging Employees

Pros

The name and possibly some free training when you are breaking into your first IT industry job or consulting job,

Cons

All of the people I started with 15 years ago (about 100) have quit or been let go. Even the star performers were eventually stabbed in the back by their old managers who were just using them to do all their work after putting in 15 years with excellent performace! Almost all management in IBM sales is over age 45 and has spent their career firing people under them to keep their jobs, that is until they are eventually fired in a power struggle with their boss, who may temporarily promote someone good. STAY out of sales at IBM and get real skills in consulting if you are somehow stuck in sales. Get certified in Project management or something.

Advice to Senior Management

I think Palmisano is an honorable man and wants to do the right thing but may be afraid to rock the boat, because revenue looks good however there is a leak in the boat: All of the bright ambitious people who want to make IBM money leave or are fired. Eventually there will be consequesces for getting rid of all the best talent. For example only the rats survive like xxxx COO with the stock scandal. That's #2 behind the CEO, how close is that? And his claim to fame was cutting jobs and not getting PC's profitable. What about human rights standards? Just outsource it to china or India despite with no enforecment of human rights. IBM under Watson Jr. used to have high standards for employee treatment and high honor for high performance. Now performance became a joke of directors manipulting #'s to reach their numbers while claiming that 90% of the people that wokr for them did not make theirs, except for their political favorites who have their numbers set low or adjusted.

If anyone ever develops a way to crack your outsourced accounts you are in big trouble. All your eggs are in one baskets with outsourcing. The cloud model could be it...doesn't matter what hardware they are on. More thought needed on that...THINK! THT

Pros

Stability? Perhaps. If you can routinely beat out at least 25% of your peers in performance, you can stay on with IBM indefinitely.

Cons

Process focus is extreme. This may be a lack of maturity on my part, but IBM spends what seem like inordinate amounts of effort in focusing on process instead of results.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of the bell curve distribution on PBC ratings or explain to your leadership that its a suggestion rather than a top down requirement.

Pros

Knowledge and experienced colleagues.
Opportunities among various groups in IBM
Work Life balance
Exposure to new technologies and client facing exposure

Cons

No fair rating mechanism
Unfair compensation for old employees
Slow promotion process
No special incentives for hard and honest work

Advice to Senior Management

Adjust the salaries of old employees with consistent ratings 2+ and 1 ratings to current market conditions
Establish a fair rating mechanism

Pros

- Extremely talented and motivated workforce
- Access to a vast array of potential markets for project work

Cons

- US employee pool is on a 'shelf-life' as 'Profits' are posted year after year though the off-shoring of jobs to India disquised as 'Reorganizations' and 'Resource Actions'
- Salary Increases are simply pathetic, if they occur at all, given a company that has done 'so well' during the downturn
- Career Advancement opportunities are anemic at best

Advice to Senior Management

Stop offshoring US jobs to AP in the 'dark of night' masked as Resource Actions.

Pros

Access to blue chip clients, good benefit and work life balance, easy to move around different cities within the company.

Cons

Projects are very poorly managed. Every level of management are encouraged/forced to give work out to IBM Global resources (READ resources from India who are neither experienced nor motivated to work for a faceless client 12 time zones away)

Advice to Senior Management

Consulting business is different from software or hardware business. It's about having the best people. If the consultants are treated the same way as the assembly line workers, they will become assembly line workers.