IBM Reviews in Singapore, Singapore Area

Pros

1. Comfortable environment
2. Nice team work
3. Nice Culture

Cons

1. Growing slow
2. Borring stuff

Advice to Senior Management

Can be more efficient

Pros

-Great learning experience due to exposure to wide range of situations and challenges
-Adoption of industry standard best practices and processes (see cons for executions of said processes)
-Management is usually supportive when help is needed.

Cons

-Processes are poorly designed and there is a large amount of overlapping between many processes. The same information gets repeated in web portals, spreadsheets and powerpoints just to satisfy the whims of some bureaucrat. It is beyond ridiculous that I was spending 50-60% of my time filling up reports and working through bureaucracy and red tape.
-Management is so detached they do not have a clue of the challenges faced by ground troops.
-Compensation compares poorly with competitors and non-vendor companies. Very difficult to hold on to talented people.
-Work life balance: what work life balance?

Advice to Senior Management

IBM SO management have to pull their heads out of the sand and listen to the people on the ground to find out what kind of challenges exist. Just replying : "it needs to be done" make you guys look like you don't care about people feedback or just ignorant. Either way, its bad management, specially when you are so worried about cost control. Do a study on how much these processes cost.
Stop the rhetoric during those useless townhalls. They make you look even more clueless.

Pros

Knowledge sharing - some good training/knowledge such as defect prevention process & 7 keys to success in project management (part of project management fundamental course)

Cons

Too much of processes!

The implementation of GDF/Lean is more of a management reporting to the global, rather than understand what is happening on the ground.

Just ask any ground staff in IBM who is involved in GDF/lean and you will know the staff's morale is at all time low.

Even with the name of 'global', it's more of a few line summary of what to do.

On how to implement it and with what tool - You figure out yourself.

That's why it's a Global Disaster Framework.

Advice to Senior Management

Reflect the staff's morale, because of GDF/lean to global, rather than the management report of how well it's done.

They are human, not robot.

P/S: Lean is for manufacturing process.

Pros

Work-life balance programs. Mobility programs.

Cons

Organization structure and rewards forces people to operate in selfish silos. Not conducive to customer-oriented solution approach. Where solution approach is adopted, the solution are too-high level, eg OnDemand. This thematic approach does not produces real-world solutions.

Advice to Senior Management

Business organizations are incurring unnecessary overheads that leads to un-competitive pricing due to division of of the organization into P&L centers. Managers of those P&L centers maximize returns for the center at the expense of the overall IBM.

Pros

- Good work benefits i.e work from home policy
- Great / recognized brand name
- Forgiving company...Room to learn and grow
- Huge company so risks are spread out
- Good training (if you are a campus hire)

Cons

- Extremely complex structure
- Difficult to understanding multiple offerings and clarity of roles
- Top heavy... as many generals as there are soldiers
- bureaucracy at its prime i.e many approving layers for simple tasks, pricing
- Lower pay than competitiors
- Too much reporting, each employee has at least 3 managers (because there are too many generals!)
- Obsession with pipeline, quarter after quarter reviews
- There are only 2 roles, you are either in sales or others. Needless to say, only sales are valued employees
- slow career progression

Advice to Senior Management

- Remove sales and pipeline obsession. There is so much more to IBM
- Lower the centre of gravity... there should be 1 manager to 5 staff. NOT 3 mangers to 1 staff.

Pros

-Many subject matter experts
-Exciting life
-Good teamwork
-A lot of learning opportunities
-Great benefits, transport allowance, maternity claim etc

Cons

-Too much hectic work
-slow promotion
-Selfish management
-low bonus and low increment
-lack of managment involvement in career development

Advice to Senior Management

Should have more level of bands to promote the consultants. Working for 4 years without any promotion and minimum increments would drive people away

Pros

IBM Singapore strongly believes in work-life balance and they allow for flexible work arrangements. They also put high value in innovations.

Cons

IBM's compensation is barely linked to work performance.

Advice to Senior Management

You should care about what your employees are doing.