IBM Reviews in Los Angeles, CA Area

Pros

There is room to grow and many resources to learn from and take advantage of. There are opportunities to work from home or remotely; however, those opportunities can sometimes be difficult to find and acquire. Benefits, job security, and resources are the biggest reasons to work for IBM.

Cons

Typical "big company" politics and game playing regarding promotions, ratings, salaries, etc. Multiple managers and numerous "admin" tasks and policies are sometimes cumbersome. Depending on the employee's specific organization, there can be a high travel requirement for those workers who may not want to travel.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees more like people and less like resources. The system in place causes managers to treat employees like resources and to base all rating evaluations on utilization. Professional growth and work/life balance are given more lip service than an actual sincere implementation.

Pros

Breadth of technology solutions and opportunities to learn new things

Cons

Working from remote locations makes it hard to gain recogniotion

Pros

Cutting edge technology
Enormous depth of resources
Lots of really brillliant people

Cons

No respect for the worker
Before we were bought out, we had free coffee, basic paper supplies (spoons, forks plates), sodas, offices with doors. After, moved into cubicles or doubled up in offices, no raises except for 1 or 2 in the department, no coffee, paper supplies, and most recently no working-from -home.

Advice to Senior Management

treat workers with a little more respect if you want them to stay. Otherwise, come right out and make it clear you want everyone to quit.

Pros

For certain types of people, IBM can be the location of a long-term, growth filled career. The company enjoys long term relationships with clients, so it is able (in theory at least) to transfer that stability into long tenures for employees.

Cons

I realize that I am biased, but being laid off along with10,000 others a month after IBM announced earnings of $10,000,000,000 and describing its employees as its greatest asset in a letter to shareholders certainly gives one pause considering that IBM brags about being a "trust based organization." Wake up call. It ain't a trust based organization. It's a greedy, short-sighted public company like any other. The fact that the company is so virtual - nearly 1/3 of employees are homebased and connected through phones and software - compounds the problem of extending any kind of culture to more recent hires. It's not the company it once was.

Advice to Senior Management

IBM needs to practice what it preaches when it comes to commitment to employees. Laying off thousands of people just to create a little bump in quarterly earnings is the kind of short sighted move that will ultimately destroy the company. IBM's people are its greatest asset, but pious homilies aside, it will take actual action by senior management to make good on this idea.

Pros

Quality people and a fast paced environment that will help you maximize your potential. Great flexibility of work/life balance. Even with all the changes in the world, and even some negative ones at IBM, IBM still manages to make the work experience a model for the rest of the world to look up to.

Cons

Small fish in a big pond for sure, but these are merely byproducts of the environment. Your challenge is not to complain about them but to adapt and become successful in the framework that exists.

Advice to Senior Management

Amazing job in making and keeping IBM the quality organization that it is through and through. I couldn't be happier to be a part of it, and Thank You for the experience.

Pros

- Ability to work at home provides some good flexibility
- Good vacation accrual.
- 401k plan is decent.
- lots of prepackaged process.

Cons

- Once you reach a certain level in your band, you wont make any more money. If your a band 8 like me, your expected to work about 60+ hours a weeks with no possibility of increasing salary. to increase salary you need to work 80 or more hours a week and get into band 9 - sell your soul at that point.
-bonuses are a joke - a good bonus for someone that completely killed themselves is about 5k.
-not able to move around like you once were
-look out, your job may and will be outsourced next.

Advice to Senior Management

- its clear in the US that if you want to be in IBM you will need to be a leader or manager of some type and expect put huge hours often. There is starting to be a fair amount of people leaving too as the wages are stagnant and the job market is picking up. Not much to say to management as they are not interested in what you have to say, or really even care. get er done jim!

Pros

brand recognition and very interesting 100 year history

Cons

two words: comp plan. probably the lowest in the industry for sales... there is an overall sentiment that the software sells itself and sales people are just there to go through the motions... the stock is doing well on the backs of the employees, who will leave when given an opportunity...

Advice to Senior Management

it is not enough to work at a company where you can say, 'i am an ibmer.' There has to be earning potential. so far, the comp plan looks like a shell game you are playing to avoid paying sales reps.

Pros

Working from home is good. There is allot of support and information on the portal for you to be successful but you need to know how to find it.

Cons

Although the company supports a work/life balance it is more of a work life integration. Expect to work long hours and do allot of travel. The resource assignment managers are all about meeting their numbers, and have no respect for their consultants as individuals.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of the resource assignment managers. I will do fine on my own.

Pros

Opportunities abound but you do have to be pretty assertive to take advantage of those opportunities

Cons

When you join the company it is easy to feel lost; like a cog in a machine.

Pros

Big Company , you can get lost

Cons

Sometimes you get lost in a large company

Advice to Senior Management

keep up the good work