IBM Reviews in New York City, NY Area

Pros

Some smart people, with real projects, trying their best to get things done.

Cons

Confused leadership running around in a circular firing squad.

Pros

Education is required, supported, and is cutting edge. Access to industry information and research is highly valuable and transferable to future employment. Corporate and divisdional goals are clearly articulated at the beginning of each year, although they frequently change dramatically from one year to the next.

Cons

IBM makes no secret that they are moving thousands of jobs overseas. In order to stay under the radar they are accomplishing this in increments of under 1000 people at a time. The IBM infrastructure is impossible to gain proficiency in navigating: long time veterans have trouble finding out 'where to go or who to talk to'. Benefits have stagnated over the years and the huge number of retirees draw on IBM revenue. IBM's research is cutting edge, but the generally do not execute on trillion dollar ideas. When IBM lays people off, they target the most senior and highly paid employees. It is common that layoffs include 30 year veterans who have had incredible success at adding value to IBM and increasing IBM revenue: these people are shell-shocked and blind sided when they get word their job has been offshored.

Advice to Senior Management

IBM is not making any friends in the United States by sending the jobs overseas. For every senior person that is layed off, IBM makes a stolid enemy in virtualy ever industry in the world. Also, start capitalizing on the wealth of patents that are granted each year. There has got to be at least 1 multi-billion dollar idea in the 15000 patents IBM files each year.

Pros

There are a lot of resources available if you're persistent and talk to the right people. The company is large enough that you can almost certainly find a project that interests you. There are quite a few bright people around from whom you can learn.

Cons

There is a bit of an ingrained "old school" culture that values conformity over creativity. There are quite a few conservative enclaves that want to simply keep their job and work under the radar until retirement. One encounters quite a bit of resistance to any actions which are perceived to threaten this.

Pros

1. Flexible work/life balance if you work on non-critical projects.
2. Excellent and open minded colleagues on the first line to work with.

Cons

1. If you work on critical projects, please prepare yourself to sacrifice your work/life balance, prepare yourself to work with the frequent high level management decision change.
2. Very poor employee recognition, unless you are a kissing-ass type of employee.

Advice to Senior Management

The management would not listen to any useful suggestions at this site. Look at the past several years, too many wrong decisions made.

Pros

Working with some of the best Technical minds within the industry

Cons

US companies are overly sales focused and promotions gravitate towards its sales force resulting in some people being promoted based on previous sales ability and not sustainability within their career.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't put leaders into roles where they have no proven capability just because they have t be put some where.

Pros

Broad, good culture, stable, work life balance

Cons

Not innovative and quick enough to market needs

Advice to Senior Management

not only look at large enterprises

Pros

the name is widely known

Cons

poor management, quality of life is very poor. phone calls throughout the night.

Advice to Senior Management

hire better management. have people on call 24/7 like you promise the customers

Pros

If you don't care about job security, and can get a job, it may pay well. However, IBM is shifting American workers into centers in low wage states and locations. Existing employees can relocate themselves or simply lost the moved job. Many job types were "debanded" (demoted). Today it is all about cheap labor.

Cons

Enormous job insecurity. Many Americans lost jobs this year but some get to return as contractors (without benefits). Number of American workers declined to 105,000 in 2009 and is believed now to be about 95,000. This is a company with about 400,000 employees. There is job growth, but not in the USA.

Advice to Senior Management

You've made your profits in recent years not by revenue, but by lowering costs, i.e., laying off Americans and reducing or eliminating benefits. What will you do for when there are no more Americans to layoff?

Pros

Knowledge-base available, industry expertise, benefits, training, and genuine team project structure.

Cons

Minimal to no bonuses, compensation is below industry average if non-experienced consultant, and too many sub par senior leaders. Additionally, as extensive as the knowledge base is, there is no easy or efficient means of accessing it or ever having the time to reuse the things that have already been done firm-wide.

Advice to Senior Management

The reason most of the young talent (in one division) left in a year was due to poor partner-level management.

Pros

- Name recognition, IBM gets you in the door
- Very ethical company
- Great work life balance
- Good "people" management, 1st line managers are very understanding when it comes to problems or issues.
- Client-centric company, client relationships are respected and IBM acts very professionally when dealing with its clients

Cons

- Company is cheap, feels like we are going out of business despite the surge in stock price
- Below average compensation.
- Average benefits package.
- Poor bonuses, even in sales. This is NOT the place to get rich. Bonuses in non-client facing jobs are virtually non-existent
- Not challenging, I can do my job in my sleep, and I've raised this to my management, nothing has changed.
- Lack of career assistance/planning, you're really left on your own to figure out your path through the machine. Unsurprisingly, this makes vertical moves near impossible unless you're a superstar (which is odd given the mediocrity in first line management).

Advice to Senior Management

- Treat your employees the same way you treat customers.
- Increase compensation to industry average at a minimum, I know swarms of EXCELLENT people who have left for a better package.
- Make sure everyone is adding value, there's a lot of middle management that's not needed.