IBM Reviews in Ottawa, ON Area

Pros

Work/life balance
Benefits
Global reach and opportunities within company
Stability
Advanced Research and Development
Long history of innovation

Cons

Bureaucracy
Process
Off shoring
Bringing advanced tech to market

Advice to Senior Management

Decentralize
Get involved in consumerization of tech

Pros

Great Technology
Incredible Number of Available Internal Resources
Brand recognition

Cons

As a rep you will spend 60% of your time filling out report on your sales activities (Siebel, Control Book, ASFT, Win Plans, Win Rooms, Client Value Path) and 40% actually facing customers.

Their CRM tools are glorified Excel spreadsheets from the dark ages.

Serious micro-management from the top down.

Advice to Senior Management

Get your sellers selling again and invest in some decent CRM tools!

Pros

- Generally secure job
- Surrounded by great people

Cons

- No career growth
- Little work recognition
- Very poor morale

Advice to Senior Management

There are definitely some leadership issues with management. It might be time for IBM's senior management team to start replacing some of the people running the internal software organization

Pros

The people are great to work with.
The management was understanding when personal problems came up.
You are rewarded for you efforts.

Cons

Developing a brand new idea that is not in the original plan for the year is almost impossible.
There is a lot of administration to carry out.

Advice to Senior Management

There are some excellent ways to communicate in IBM, but there is not really an incentive for other employees to help each other when a big opportunity comes along. Someway to add an incentive for people that collaborate with other teams would be great.

Pros

Good starting salary
Lots of opportunities to work in different practices and technologies.

Cons

Poor pay increases (even top performers barely keep up with inflation)
Poor bonus structures ( <5% for even top performers)
Ever decreasing benefits (pension plan used to be a DBPP, now it is a matching DCPP)
Pressure from management to work longer hours
Poor work life balance
Little recognition for those who do their job well but just do their job (not top performers)
Employees who put family life first can expect to receive no pay increases or bonuses (single parents can pretty much forget any raises because they just don't have the extra time to put in to the company)
Training budgets get cut every year
Very stressful work environment
After about 5 years you will find that your pay is near the bottom of the industry pay scale for your position. And that is where it will stay if you stay with IBM.
Key note: Execs pay increases do not reflect employee pay increases. In fact, as a percentage of base salary, execs total compensation increases grossly out pace employee total compensation increases; including the top performers.
The company puts no value in technical skills. In fact the company has a policy that treats technical people as commodities, not employees. This commoditization of technical skills is what is driving the off shoring of so many technical positions. The only skills that are valued in North America are the "high value" skills. (Project Management, IT Architect, Business Analyst). The Programmers, DBA, Technical admins, and testers of the world are seen as disposable.

Advice to Senior Management

Your company is only as strong as your employees. Start treating your employees with respect and actually giving them pay increases and bonuses that actually recognize the effort that these people put in. Change the performance review process to rate people on what they achieve, not how their achievements stack up against everyone else. IBM claims to be a top leader company. Start paying like a top leader company. At least pay at the 50% percentile. The company is starting to see brain and talent drain. When the flood gates open this will only serve to hurt the company.

Pros

international company, good training, online resources

Cons

less impact
too much maintainese of old products

Advice to Senior Management

be more flexible and innovative, faster turnaround

Pros

Working with smart people
Can work from home

Cons

Yearly layoffs are disheartening, even if you don't feel targeted.

Advice to Senior Management

The company is being run by the accountants and the lawyers instead of the innovators. Productivity is dismal. For instance, there are no Administrative Assistants, so managers must act as part time secretaries, which is silly, since they are paid much more. Computers provided are laughable, and cause too much loss of time. etc etc.

Pros

Good salary. If you have a good manager opportunities are endless. If you like to work at the same level for a long time and promote yourself well when speaking to senior management you will do well.

Cons

IBM promotes a culture of good management and flexible work schedule but most often the demands of the role and the inexperience of the manager means a lot of extra hours and a dislike for requests for flexibility.

Advice to Senior Management

There should be more consistency from one manager to another about what the work expectations are. Some seem to appreciate quality work over hours worked, others are intent on having people work a lot of hours even if a poor quality job is done.

Pros

Salary is pretty satisfied and working load is not too much. A lot of events/activities conducted every week. People are nice

Cons

Put you to learn something totally new without enough instructions, don't care about what you did is correct or wrong, give u very minimal responsibilities.

Advice to Senior Management

Lead intern students from easy tasks till hard questions to understand and get familiar with the working project and environment

Pros

There are plenty of growth opportunities within IBM as long as your inline manager allows you to make a move.

Cons

Transparency available to senior management all the way down to bottom

Advice to Senior Management

Eliminate micro-management