IBM Reviews in Sao Paulo, Brazil Area

Pros

Working with people around the world. greate team

Cons

you will have a difficult time growing .

Advice to Senior Management

Too many people to manage

Pros

Mobility is permited
Very good salary benefits
Very good place to learn about IT market and trends

Cons

Too much work and no recognition
Low salaries
Extreme high-pressure from executives and no-support to resolve internal issues
Too much processes slows the company
Too much organizational structures makes use only of escalations to get things done in the proper time

Advice to Senior Management

It should resolve internal issues first to help the employees to get things done more fast

Pros

- Good opportunities for career growth
- Makes it easy for changing job roles and positions
- Career path is well-defined
- Broad business vision

Cons

- Salaries lower than competitors; especially if you are a long time employee
- Too much competition within the company; hurts overall business strategy
- Many layers of management and overlapping job roles
- Inefficiency of resources and slow response to market changes
- HW e SW divisions still depend on mainframe sales
- Cross reporting makes employees waste time keeping multiple managers up to date.

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce number of management layers and cross reporting. Speed up product development and invest in making employees more productive, with less administrative overhead.

Pros

- technical challenging;
- huge customers;
- work with some edge technological products;
- some great software products and interesting methodologies

Cons

- No finance recompense for technical jobs;
- No recognition
- No real carrier growth path;

Advice to Senior Management

- Stop being so greed and start investing on human capital;
- Focus again on being a excellent technological company;
- Give real recognition to employees, mainly technicians, not only to managers.

Pros

Ethic, fair and solid company.

Cons

Too bureaucratic, too focused on quarter closing. Should spend more energy on long term goals.

Advice to Senior Management

Simplify approvals and processes. Give more authonomy to manager and executives

Pros

Different Chalenges every day in IBM

Cons

I think that intellectual capital in IBM is not well organized and provided in a way that could be easily reused.

Advice to Senior Management

Organize the intellectual capital in a way that can be more easily reused.

Pros

Great place to learn new skills

Cons

3 jobs, 1 salary
Little work/life balance

Advice to Senior Management

You are loosing everyone that matters to the business, stop focusing only on numbers and take care of your people.

Pros

The real great benefit at IBM is the flexibility to work from anywhere and depending on the position, anytime. Also, the possibility to work with other cultures and languages is really a good advantage if you have the opportunity of working in a global team.

Cons

The compensation plans in IBM are really low comparing to similar on the market. The monthly salary is very low and benefits are far below for a company on that size. The yearly bonus is to make laugh, normally 50% of a salary maximum. The normal benefits, like healthy plans, meals, etc, are only ok, and not as well as anyone should expect for a company on that size.
Chances of being promoted are rarely and motivated by the people you know, not the work you do. Your career grows very slowly through the years.
Managers usually have more than 200 employees under them, and of course, this is impossible to work like this, so you are on your own. You need to manage yourself and hope that anybody notice you, so you have any chances for promotions and recognition.
In the last year or two, the benefits are getting worse, as they cut some of them, and freeze some others.

Advice to Senior Management

They really need to think if they want to continue to get cheap workforce so in very little time the quality of services will start to decrease quickly, and customers will be affected.
In employees point of view, they need to be recognized and have better compensation plans and benefits, that is what everybody expects from a company like IBM.

Pros

Job Stability and health insurance. IBM insurance is one of the best in Brazil, but sometimes makes me think that we really need a nice health insurance because we usually work more than expected and have no fun at all.
Patience is tested every day with new rules, cuting salaries and forcing a "I love the company" actitude.

Cons

The enterprise did not recognize the employees... makes billions and give the worst bonus ever for the employees, always teling that there is not enough money to give a good bonus. And always, after this speach, the enterprise buy a new company for millions of dollars...

Advice to Senior Management

Nothing to say. The salary policy still strange, since a lot of potato coaches still making lots of money and doing nothing for the enterprise.

Pros

Stability, biggest IT firm in the world, looks good on CV

Cons

Bad communication, managers with absolutely no people skills, sales/profit orientation with no regard to what the client really needs, too many lines of report internally and no support from management, level of competence leaves much to be desired, IBM is living on the laurels of years gone by, too much " cover your ass" policies hindering productivity and overwhelms managers

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to the people immediately under your responsibility, be more supportive, participate by helping them achieve their targets not only demanding results