IBM Reviews

Pros

Lots of resources and opportunities available within the company

Cons

not many opportunities to provide management feedback

Advice to Senior Management

get feedback from employees more often

Pros

Great people , assets and forward thinking management.
Teleworking
Flexible time.

Cons

Pay not so competitive.
If you are in Software Group like I was it is important you are in CA, MA or in Raleigh to get promoted .

Advice to Senior Management

Pay deserving employees more and bring back thank you award system. Give the opportunity to technical leaders to attend Information On Demand conferences and not for people managers

Pros

Nice facilities including personal work area with doors. Nice common area, and in the suburb so no need to drive download to get to work and pay for expensive parking. There's an onsite gym with free class.

The company is big and offer somewhat stable employment opportunity. There's a big student internship program that offers way to get extra help and also allow you to look for next generation talent for hire.

Cons

It's such a big organization that it makes you feel like you are only a part of something huge.
It's hard to see your impact on the business and there are way too many processes, or "way to do things" that make innovation and simplification difficult. There's also slow pace for compensation increase and career advancement, if you want to have a quick in your career. It's not likely to happen here.

Advice to Senior Management

The compnay needs to stop tightening the belt just to reach the 2015 roadmap. Understanding that our executives made a commitment to the share holders to return profit through a high earning per share, but the working conditions (compensation, work/life balance are really suffering.) Suggest that management need to re-double effort in investing in people and resource to take a bigger share of the market.

Pros

good company with training, develop skills, networking client engagement, business development good salary, good coworkers, depend on what you can do

Cons

not flexible, too much travel, no work from home, rigid, lot of processes to follow, manangement is not in great shape

Advice to Senior Management

more leadership, more flexible, more sharing, develop staff more, have more visibility, less process, less meetings, less travel requriements, that's all

Pros

Good working relationships within Strategy and Change practice

Cons

Large complex sales process with many parties involved

Advice to Senior Management

Provide single points of leadership v. complicated project structures

Pros

Freedom to innovate. No micro-management. Very good work-life balance. At the end of the day, it all depends on the manager you work for.

Cons

Very hard to influence any decision making at any level. A lot of processes in place which is understandable for such a large company. However, they slowdown your work.A lot of time is spent adhering to policies OR following training on policies.
There is system for every little thing that you need to do and it takes time to learn who to contact for what and then the time to actually get the task done.

Advice to Senior Management

The company has been run very well and is now in great hands. If possible, it would be nice to see reduction in processes and administrative ovehead.

Pros

Leadership development
Work-life integration
Career advancement/career possibilities
Senior leadership capabilities to manage the company/businss

Cons

Enable faster decission making
Enable more flexible horizontal growth as a truly globally integrated enterprise

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

You can work on as many projects based on your interest. Most of the employees have ample time to complete a milestone which enables to concentrate on other stuff.

Cons

The compensation is less when compared with other companies. Also the perks and other benefits are also minimum. Freshers are not given an chance to choice their team.

Advice to Senior Management

Freshers must be informed before about the job role they would be posted and their preference whether they would like it or not . This is because shifting within teams in IBM is kind of difficult unless the manager is an understanding person.

Pros

Work life balance, Work from home flexibility, no manager harasssment

Cons

Incompetent Senior Management, Bad pay, faulty performance review parameters

Advice to Senior Management

The gap between competent Indian resources and incompetent western functional managers will make you lose Indian managers very fast.