IBM Reviews in New York City, NY Area

Pros

Networking and quality of people

Cons

Long hours, stressful work environment, difficult senior management

Advice to Senior Management

Motivate your employees, they're the only force behind your success

Pros

IBM is highly respected and I have had some great opportunities for growth and development here (that I was lucky enough to fall into). Great benefits package and I've worked with some really phenomenal people, both professionally and otherwise.

I've been privileged to work with great project teams and have great management but that is not the case for everyone.

Cons

I've seen many really good people not rewarded for their hard work with compensation or career advancement; others have been rather incompetent and still manage to work there way up pretty quickly. Starting salaries are always competitive but raises are pitiful from that point on (this is standard in the industry) with new hires coming in at higher rates than the one year experienced hires make. Similar things happen to experienced hires -- once you're hired don't expect to watch your salary grow!

Too much bureaucratic nonsense to complete, and management puts way too much emphasis on "utilization" whereas I know many other firms that give comp time for working more than 40-45 hrs/week.

Advice to Senior Management

Reward your people! Keep your good people happy so they don't leave and don't make us fill out so much paperwork. Invest in teambuilding.

Pros

Learning, networking, access to top mgmt of clients

Cons

Way underpaid, overworked, coach only for travel

Pros

There is an amazing breadth of experience you can gain working at IBM. 300mm semiconductor fab is leading edge technology which provides endless amount of personal and technical challenges. There exists a lot of flexibility in work schedules without effort to balance your personal life.

Cons

Part time employment , while availalbe, is extremely limited in career growth despite hype. Extremely unnecessarily stressful environment due to inappropriate distribution of resources as well as poor top down middle management techniques.

Advice to Senior Management

Manage the managers with same level of accountability that exists for employees.

Pros

Overall, IBM is a good company to work for as it has a great history of innovation. You have a lot of flexibility at work today.

Cons

There are some bureaucracy as IBM is a big company. However, the plus overweight the minus by a big margin.

Pros

Has good training program and a lot of resources you can leverage

Cons

Does not care about its employee

Advice to Senior Management

Should not treat your employee simply as money making machine

Pros

Support for new hires
Great exposure to different clients and industries
A lot of opportunities to travel

Cons

This is a very large organization. The key is to find a network of individuals which will make navigating the system easier when you need to get something done quickly.

Pros

Good benefits both medical and 401K
Pay is about on par with competition
To get fired is a rarity

Cons

Environment is very bureaucratic and risk taking is limited
Old ideas continue to overpower new ones

Advice to Senior Management

Promote accountability and responsibility

Pros

Great people, involved in exciting work; stability of leadership

Cons

so large that it's sometimes difficult and slow to get things done.

Pros

Name recognition of IBM still carries weight in the industry. Just look at the stock price. Even though you will be under paid and have limited resources available to you the IBM job on your resume will open doors.

Cons

Frustrating, if you like to get things done. If you are one of those people that like to have focus and see the fruits of you labor then IBM is not for you. Over the years IBM has abandoned most of its core values and has become focused on the short term results on the balance sheet. That means cutting to bolster profitability, even if it means crippling the companies ability to innovate. At a recent meeting in Tampa the Head of HR was speaking to IBM employees. He was asked what the company was going to do about the loss of its most talented employees. The response was that the data he had said that IBM was retaining the most productive people. There is both truth and blatant misrepresentation in that statement. Spreadsheets can be made to say anything you need them to say and IBM has become experts at deciding what the outcome of the numbers should be before they gather them. So if you just measure metrics like time on email, or reporting timeliness yes the most productive paper pushers are still there. If you measured productivity as an SMB would, IBM is at a junction as precarious as it was in the 80's but did not know it.

Advice to Senior Management

When IBM had issues in the late 80's and early 90's management was tapped to select people to be let go. That resulted in a brain drain at IBM as the people least qualified to make those choices were in management. Now IBM has the annual review to use, except the manager who will make the choice of whom is to go can adjust the review down when they fear layoffs to protect friends. It is more common than most would like to believe. And those who try to innovate are usually the first to go because they invariably rock the boat along the way.