IBM Reviews in France

Pros

Really thrilling engineering challenges and problems to solve. Feeling to be surrounded by competent and intelligent persons. Interns are well perceived and can wander around the whole site to ask questions on their problems. Their insight is appreciated.
Montpellier is a cool city.

Cons

Not extremely fast-paced, maybe not enough for some. Intern pay is low compared to standards. Sometimes they don't have much work for interns and consequently give you stupid tasks.

Advice to Senior Management

Create a real internship program, more orientated towards the intern, not simply involving him on a team that doesn't always need him and only gives him work "on the go". Make it more fast-paced.

Pros

Vacations days and social benefits ...

Cons

Unattainaible objectives (when clear)
Opacity of evaluation and lack of recognition on all non sales-related activities
Huge waste of energy and time on internal processes hindering work
No ability for the management to recognize financially good performances (individual or groups)

Advice to Senior Management

More informal recognition would go a long way (job dinners, team events, ...)
Reward client-related good performances even when not related to new signings
More visibility on career options and requirements for promotion

Pros

Large range of products. Large panel of compétences among colleagues. Benefits policy. Possibility to move to different jobs. Holidays given at arrival !

Cons

Too much reporting. Too Boring to preserve your image versus your results. Spend More than 25% of my time on administrative tasks. Everything is complex...every single task become a nightmare because of process.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop spending time in meetings during which no actions are taken for customer ! Don't believe the numbers given by employees via reporting ! Pend time with customers instead of being stucked at office.

Pros

IBMers are globally very competent and willing to share their knowledge. Young people do have the ability to learn greatly in a very short time.

Cons

Compensations are lower than other companies for the same job. Employees moral is quite low. Motivation decreases as the company makes benefits and salaries stay the same.

Advice to Senior Management

Management should consider students as a value source and not only a way to save on taxes. A better salary policy would increase people motivation.

Pros

The people I work with. I will never stop being amazed by my coworkers skills, friendliness and desire to achieve the best for their customer.
The projects you might be able to work on. IBM does stuff that a lot of companies wouldn't do.

Cons

I am sick of that PBC nonsense. It is meaningless as you never ever have clear (SMART as they say) objectives. And, on top of that, this is all relative to the overall performance of the whole company. How does that work?

Advice to Senior Management

I have said it before but I think this is getting worse. You have no respect whatsoever for your employees. They work their asses off and get nothing in return!
And I am not sure that Global Delivery is actually a solution.
As long as shareholders and EPS will be the only arget then there is very little hope the situation will change.

Pros

There were a lot of good reasons to join IBM in the past. Nowadays, it is limited and senior management is selecting managers not for their experience and originality, but to look similar to them, reducing opportunities for innovative people. The long-term performance seems to be guaranteed though.

Cons

Lack of innovation, weakness of middle management, syndrome of "not invented here", too much US-centric despite its globally integrated enterprise strategy. Jobs in emerging countries are booming while decreasing in the US/Europe.

Advice to Senior Management

Driving innovation without accepting criticism is never going to make it. Manager selection process is not reflecting the IBM value about innovation. The higher managers go, the less they listen to employees and the more they use authority.

Pros

Interesting projects to work on

Cons

Salary very low comparing with IT market

Advice to Senior Management

Higher salary to keep good employees

Pros

Big and strong companies where we can evolve from one division to another - very different business areas

Cons

More technical than busines focus

Advice to Senior Management

Leaders are very professional and have strong competencies in a fierce world

Pros

- Some of the projects can be very interesting, as a developper.
- Innovation is very much encouraged.
- Management is quite flexible about tools and processes used for development.

Cons

- Competition among people in the same team, no team spirit possible
- Technical expertise is completely ignored. You'd better be a good talker and in front of the customers rather than a good developper actually producing something.
- Career is something that's very much talked about, but not much is done. And nothing is done wrt to technical expertise.

Advice to Senior Management

It's not enough to buy other companies: to build good products, you need good developpers. Identify and retain them, before they leave.

Pros

Good work and private life balance

Cons

whether you are performing or not there is very little difference.
don't expect huge pay rise once you are on board.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop managing the company like a bank and start to focus on the technology.