IBM Reviews in Dublin, Ireland Area

Pros

- flexible schedule
- great work to life balance
- lots of technologies available
- lots of courses available for free
- brand name

Cons

- low that average pay
- bonuses next to zero
- poor planning
- moving between departments next to impossible

Pros

multicultural environment with many labs in the world

Cons

difficult to have a promotion
people are reshuffled as machines, you might loose your expertise in a specific area as you are moved from one project to another.
If you are in sw development, you might be shielded from the customer as an active subject to collect the requirements. You will be involved with customers mostly for problems or beta programs

Advice to Senior Management

help to promote and improve the technical skills.

Pros

Experience is second to none, exposure at all sorts of clients and senior professionals. Which was unreal for me when I first joined as a graduate.

Cons

Pay simply is bad compared to my peers from college, 3 years on my pay has only marginally improved.
IBM is the civil service of the private sector for many people in the company this is great......

Advice to Senior Management

Reward employees properly and stop stabbing people in the back

Pros

Many opportunities with a variety of customers.
A lot of freedom to innovate and develop better ways of doing things.
Huge opportunities to learn and develop abilities.
A lot of independence given to staff.

Cons

Clients are overpromised resources and services that haven't been developed. More coordination because sales and technical services would easily resolve this.
Staff not protected from verbal aggression and abuse from customers.
Not enough listening to lower level staff with direct customer facing roles.
Failure to manage workloads resulting in hugely unrealistic workloads.

Advice to Senior Management

Coordinate relationships between management and operational staff more effectively.
Stop selling services you cannot deliver, or at least delay implementation until capabilities are developed.
Don't pick up bad customers on the promise of future business - it is already resulting in collosal losses.
Listen to your staff - don't just take the clients word for it.
Stop promising resources to clients that don't exist.

Pros

Remote working is possible although company now scaling back on it

Cons

Need to constantly push back on out of hours requests

Advice to Senior Management

This is not the USA, learn to work around better employee conditions in Ireland

Pros

Technical company, a lot of technical employees to learn from.

Cons

Little investment in training or employee development.

Pros

Career opportunities
Opportunities to learn
Structure to learn
thousands of job's to choose from
Cutting edge world changing projects
The people
Good direction from Management
Flexibility and good work/life balance
Structured appraisals process
Slackers identified and marginalised or booted
Some really good people managers
Good structure with local management.

Cons

It's all about shareholder profits.
Sam makes no sense.
Politics hampers innovation
Too many people there to steal your thunder and cut your throat while doing it
Trust diminishing within
Senior leadership live in ivory towers - disconnected completely from the coal face
Entirely scorecard/numbers driven, the bean counters are in control
Bean counters are not human.
Austerity measures poorly implemented - stifles creativity and demoralises
Too much reliance on process
Poor compensation compared to others in the industry
Poor rewards, pittance for being a 1 performer 5 years in a row
Takes ages to get any changes made
Some really bad people managers, cause attrition of really good people
Coveting of information that could make change (politics driven)
Poor communications at times (left hand right hand stuff)
Bad change management
Did I already say Exec's live in ivory towers?.

Advice to Senior Management

Executives get out of your ivory towers
Put the bean counters back in their boxes
Keep coaching for performance
Identify and fire the slackers, don't wait for them to infect the solid contributors
Pay for performance, over an beyond your competitors.
Recognize the hard workers if you want to keep them
Watch your competitors, because they are watching and pinching your best people
Ditch the 20th century way of appraisals, we've moved on now.
If you have a good idea, implement it, your often late to the post because of processes.
Halve the processes, they are not needed.
Invest in a proper management development program and be consistent.
Make the first day for a new hire so amazing that they will sell their soul to you.
Kill the acronyms already.

Pros

People are great with very different skills and knowledge, always ready to help out.
Good company to have on your CV but...

Cons

Too many useless managers and middle-management.
You are squeezed for everything (clocking time, holidays requests...). Most of managers do not know how to deal with employees and do not treat them very well. No recognition in your work and not a place for careers growth..

Advice to Senior Management

Treat people with more respect and appreciate the time they spend solving customers problems.
Salary is very low when starting at the very bottom where you have to filter all the angry etc.. customers before escalation..

Pros

A chance to work on some truly interesting technologies and projects. Great work life balance. Excellent, understanding mid level management who really look after their workers.

Cons

Poor pay relative to other companies. Once inside IBM, your pay will not increase relative to your increased experience - you need to leave and return to be properly compensated. Can be too big a place, with lots of bureaucracy.

Pros

The people (what's left of them). The work.
Work-life balance (working from home, even abroad, is normal).
Immediate management is always understanding and helpful. Unfortunately nothing depends on them.

Cons

Upper management and company direction is completely screwed. Employees are treated as nothing but an expense. Middle management is clueless and constantly engaged in power struggles. Investment, if at all present, is completely random. Lack of funding is driven to an extent that directly affects climate and productivity.

Cost-cutting is leading to absurd situations like lack of stationery, patent freezes, having to buy your own hardware, and promotions without pay increases. There's no end in sight, having achieved a $10 EPS by nothing other than spending cuts, crazy Sam is now aiming for $20. There's nothing left to cut, but they'll cut it anyway. Internet and company cars are already gone, watch out for your healthcare and pension plans.

Advice to Senior Management

Give up the absurd and utterly unnecessary EPS targets. They are totally unrealistic, and are driving everyone away from what was once a great place to work. Profits made of cost-cutting will never be sustainable. Stop externalising expenses to employees: every Euro an employee spends costs you three!