IBM Reviews in Philadelphia, PA Area

Pros

Great place to start a career right out of college. Diverse projects provide an opportunity to observe how business is done in different industries. You also get to travel and see the country (and possibly the world). People who work here are great, they're some of the smartest people I've worked with.

Cons

Travel schedule can be exhausting. You are a profit center, so focus on maintaining billable status is paramount, and management assures you don't forget it!

The biggest negative I see about IBM now is, that the management is moving large amount of work off-shore to lower cost locales, this is great when the objective is to reduce cost, but quality is compromised. In my opinion, IBM will do well for the near future, but once the quality issue catch up.. watch out.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't focus so much on the quarterly stock reports, rather pay some attention to the well being of the company and its workforce for the long run.

Pros

IBM is a stable, wealthy company that has many perks including the benefit package and health insurance avaiable. IBM employment for the most part is relatively stable.

Cons

IBMers are typically overworked providing services that exeed 40 hours a week including nights and weekends that are just expected. Balancing personal and work life can be difficult especially since the many positions are work from home. Additionally, collaboration becomes very difficult in this position since everyone must engage in conference calls.

Advice to Senior Management

IBM leadership should make more of an effort to use collaboration such as team meetings where at least once a quarter the team leads and managers can physically meet in a conference room to discuss the customer's risks, issues and new services so that there is interaction providing increased productivity and efficiency.

Pros

Benefits, Atmosphere, Smart people, Wonderful connections

Cons

Middle Management, and sometimes Senior mamnagement can be hard headed and slow to change.

Advice to Senior Management

Do better!

Pros

IBM provides guidance and then allows each person to pursue their ideas. IBM is very open to new ideas and strives to be sure every voice is heard. IBM is all about business and high perfromance yet will jump in when ever a collegue is in perrill. I have seen people do anothers assignment when their spouse is sick, lend money when an economy went into depression,

Cons

IBM can be slow on moving at times becuase they do not dictate, Some competitiors and customers take advantage of the ethical practices of IBM.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to focus on customes and employees and of course share holders.

Pros

Flexibility in work-life balance
Telecommuting culture
New parent time off (for both moms and dads)
Projects are generally stable and longer-running

Cons

Very limited resources for supplies, education
No interest from management on your professional development or support
Employees are numbers - good ratings (2/2+) do not mean you are safe from layoffs

Advice to Senior Management

Trying to run the company by pure numbers is demolishing morale, especially in the AS division. Cutting the most experienced employees in favor of lower-cost replacements is impacting to the ability of teams to actually serve the clients. In some cases the project team is simply disbanded since the resources are no longer available, even though they are happy with the current team!

Pros

Working from home.

The System x Technical sales group is by far the best technical sales team out there. Sadly, I don't think that's going to be true much longer. I have heard that IBM SE's aren't that great, but I think that's true for the other brands, not x86. The x86 SE's at IBM are top-notch.

Cons

Just about everything at this point. IBM was getting to be a terrible place to work about 3 years ago. Now it's unbearable. Almost everyone I know wants to leave.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire Sammie. I know this will never happen, but running a company week-by-week, quarter-by-quarter with only Wall Street results as a metric of success is a recipe for 100% complete failure. How do you think Starbucks ended up with 4 coffee shops on a single corner? Longer-term company health is clearly no longer valued at all, not a single bit. This will show, even on Wall St. in the next couple of years.

Pros

Large company with a lot of resources and world-wide opportunities. Liberal work-at-home policy. Challenging project assignments. Some recognition and additional compensation for top performers.

Cons

Frequent travel can cause family stress while additional security measures and cost constraints increase the hassle of trips.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a long-term view on impact of cost-cutting measures to employee morale.

Pros

401K match of 50cents to the dollar up to 6%. Tuition reimbursement. Telecommuting convenient depending on job title.

Cons

Very management top heavy. Many management layers of people managing the same departments or divisions just with a different title. Lots of masked information from management to tell you just enough to give appearance of answering your question. Employees are treated and referred to as 'headcount' or numbers. Salary increases are minimum and usually between 1%-3% and only for 1 and 2+ performers. We are not one company. We are 100K US employees are fighting, kicking, screaming and scratching over people to keep our jobs until the ax hits us. No sense of real team work but they like to use that word a lot. Proceed with caution.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of Palmisano and bring in new blood. An outsider would be best so they're not manipulated and molded by the executives up top and their secretive ways. Stop caring so much about the stockholders (yourselves and your golf buddies) and realize that without your employees you will eventually lose some customers. Make a clean sweep of some of the top executives that only look at money and focus more on talent retention. Nuff said

Pros

IBM has good products and a lot of them. Since the product portfolio is strong, there are options in moving within a division to sell different solutions. The pay is competitive, but limited by the absurd quota setting and six month cycle. Lots of professional and knowledgeable people work at the customer level.

Cons

The Peter principle of management is in full effect. Those in management are typically put there for the wrong reasons. Success in selling has no impact on success as a manager. To much of a revolving door on the sales territories means that valuable customer relationships are being ignored.

Advice to Senior Management

Respect the sales force for what it really provides.....critical relationships with customers. Stop the constant threats and micromanagement. Trust your people and they'll perform like professionals.

Pros

Stable company; industry leader in many areas; ongoing opportunity to get involved in new areas of the business; focus on customer satisfaction and customer value; innovative; leader in open systems; great supporter/promoter of women, minorities, etc;

Cons

- I worked there for over 20 years and saw one of their core principles, "respect for the individual", set aside and replaced with "what ever is best for IBM". On a scale of 1-4 (1 = best), I was rated a 2 or 2+ for every year for over 20 years. I made my quota in 2008, was told multiple times during 2008 what a great job I was doing by my manager, then I was laid off in Feb 2009.
- Staffed very thin - be sure to take your laptop with you on vacation and set aside a few hours a day to work. Actively trying to move most of their US based resources off shore to lower cost countries ("stealth" layoffs of over 4600 people in Feb 2009 never announced to the press).
- In sales, a generally high base salary (good) but limited leverage as they always adjust the quota, or ratchet back the pay plan to limit potential payouts.
- Constant change and reorganizations, warranted in some cases, however it's just movement for the sake of movement at times. Management is sometimes disconnected from the relationships that the front line team builds with customers.

Advice to Senior Management

Add "respect for the individual" back into the fundamental values of the company.