Pros

-very relax yet fast past environment and also a good environment for learning new tools. Coworkers are also very helpful.

Cons

-if you are a sales rep, you get monitored for call time with respect to your quarterly quotas. Not many downsides as an intern

Advice to Senior Management

provide more greater responsibilities for interns. Get them involved in more important tasks that will affect business process. ask for their inputs

Pros

Very flexible working hour and minimum to none supervision. Open to students to start their own projects.

Cons

Too many meetings and hard to catch up skills if no required experiences with you. Co-workers are found everywhere outside of office.

Advice to Senior Management

Students should have been given more chances to write codes and work with senior developers so that they can build up more skills

Pros

certain assignment opportunities are great
previous employment on resume
some co-workers are great

Cons

# of hours;
how assignments are given out (who you know vs. capabilities)

Advice to Senior Management

have management directing people to work smart vs. work pointless hours then we'd all get a better work vs. life balance

Pros

-- Flexible schedule. Say, you can come around 11:00am and leave at 4:00pm. The key is to deliver result and don't miss important meetings.

-- Lots of training and improvement programs for employees. Many are useful despite some are superficial.

-- Compensation is pretty good compared to other companies in Toronto

-- Opportunities to do interesting jobs

Cons

In some departments, "cross-organizational impact" is the only thing that matters because managers have no idea how to evaluate your technical contribution. This may be ok because for large departments, one or two components may mean very little. However, this culture also enabled intense political fight for visibility. Since code doesn't matter, why bother? All I should do is to spend as little time as I can getting my crappy code out of the door, and as much time as I can manipulating other people/team to do things for me and I grab the credit, right?

Larger team is normally worse. Staying in a team of fewer than 10 people, you'll have much better visibility.

Advice to Senior Management

nothing

Pros

-World-class company, good on your resume
-better than average salary and benefit package (but not the best)
-Flexible work hour/schedule
-Competitive environment (can be good or bad)
-offer opportunity to work in other team and project

Cons

-Very hard to get a promotion and performance review can be biased as it's heavily depends on your manager's evaluation.
-Developers have very little exposure the direction and management aspect of the team/company.

Advice to Senior Management

Show appreciation and recognition to employees who have done good job. Provide better salary to attract and keep talented employees Be honest and keep employees informed of what is happening within the team and company.

Pros

There's a job for everyone. Hardworking, lazy, smart, idiot, senior, junior - you can get a highly paid job at IBM as long as the hiring manager is like you.

Cons

The bad news is the good news. Because managers are very conservative (read counter progressive) and like to hire people that are like them, down to every detail including fashion, or lack thereof, the teams seem to be very homogeneous and inflexible in thinking.

Bonuses and salary rise were a joke this year. Not only they were late 3 months or so, but some guys who got promoted from band 8 to 9 received between 1% and 2% raise. Now, if their salary were 1 million then 2% would be.... well, not really. You can check their salaries on glassdoor :)

Advice to Senior Management

As always, my advice to managers is this: try to listen to advice.
Try to do things differently for once, but not because different means you could receive ovations from your fellows managers, but because that different is something you don't agree with. Have the courage. Have faith.

Pros

One of the best aspects of working for IBM is the ability to work from any office location as well as working from home.

Cons

There are many corporate strategies that are forced upon employees and often the senior leadership assumes they have been adopted, when in reality they are not.

Advice to Senior Management

Limit the number of strategies imposed on employees and provide proper education for employees to get on-board and excited about a new strategy. Often, strategies are told but not explained well.

Pros

Excellent opportunities to learn â?? Free in class training and online learning (Valued at $500 to $3000 for non IBMers), access to all IBM products, time given to learn new skills required for the job, on site library, online books.
Great management â?? Smart, ready to give advice, interested in employees, no micro management.
Good feedback system â?? Everyone you work with has an input and no ranking system with coworkers
Tim Hortons on site and on site cafeteria (but its a bit pricy)
On site gym and lot of extra work activities (outdoor sports, yoga, pool, ps3s, community events, etc)
Great team environment and friendly coworkers.
Competitive salary
 Discounted certifications
Well respected company (Your experience will be valued)
Interesting projects on world renowned products
Company discounted tickets and vouchers

Cons

Depends on your team, but personally I found some senior management to be bad in project management and some low performing workers getting awarded for non work related tasks.
Big company so some processes take much longer than they should
Lack of communication/co-ordination between IBM groups â?? Sometimes the same work is done by 2 different groups and they start competing against each other.

Advice to Senior Management

Dont give awards to underachievers as it creates a bad team atmosphere. Better manage projects by understanding stakeholders and by having a fixed time for project deliverables.

Pros

At IBM, you have the wealth of resources available at your fingertips that only comes with working for a multinational corporation. I had a wonderful team of coworkers and was continually being challenged with interesting projects that continually developed my skills.

Cons

Like many corporations, shareholders are the top priority at IBM, explaining why thousands of employees were laid off in late 2008/early 2009, despite IBM having a record year in 2008. I was lucky to have been spared (I left IBM to pursue grad studies), but there were many senior positions cut in the layoffs -- people that had been working for IBM for most of their careers, outed to save a few dollars. It makes you wonder if the same could happen to you if you stayed in the company for many years.

Advice to Senior Management

Work extremely hard and constantly push yourself to do better. Someone is always watching, and there are so many opportunities to advance in IBM that top talent will have no trouble at all rising through the ranks.

Pros

For one, you are with like-minded peers with similar education levels. There are many resources to help you learn on the job, and you are on the leading edge of knowledge.

Cons

The compensation in Calgary for consulting does not compare well to similar roles in corporations. The other downside is the bonus structure is significantly lacking compared to corporate calgary.

Advice to Senior Management

IBM in Calgary is in a unique position due to proximity to oil and gas industry. Special attention to this group is necessary to not only attract and retain quality employees, but to identify services and offerings that are higher in the value chain compared to IT.