IBM Reviews in Toronto, ON Area

Pros

Very professional people in the SAP team in Toronto. There is a great team spirit and camaraderie. Excellent opportunities for growth and advancement. Pay is decent, but who is ever entirely satisfied with their remuneration?

Cons

Very long hours and client commitment, but this is part of what we accept as normal in the SAP project space.

Pros

- at times interesting projects
- development can happen if you land good projects & roles, if you are in a BS role - good luck

Cons

- skill / career development is absent
- zero variable comp for delivery staff that hit utz targets while partners / management bonuses are fully topped up
- Promotion rationale is ever changing and unclear
- Red tape is applied to red tape layered on top of bureaucratic sillyness

Advice to Senior Management

- your internal workings are seemily more important than the clients that we serve

Pros

Ability to move to different areas and different job roles

Cons

Gone are the days of "respect of individual"

Advice to Senior Management

People are the most important capital of a company, executives need to treat people/employees the way the like to be treated.

Pros

Low level of experience to obtain job
Brand recognition working there
Quick pace environment forces you to adapt and learn quickly

Cons

Unprofessional work environment and communication
As a contract working, they REMIND you you're not part of their clique
Training is horrible

Advice to Senior Management

It doesn't work when all departments are the same clique. Offering suggestions will just make you hated by other departments.

Pros

global company with flexibility to grow and develop in a multitude of areas. Ability to expand skills and diversify. Strong leadership that's compelling to work for.

Cons

A lot of internal processes and risk management points of view which sometimes feel like they limit your ability to flourish.

Pros

IBM is great in terms of encouraging employee with continue education

Cons

office politics, people get lazy doing the same job without desire to advance or make change in career

Pros

Good opportunities, new projects keep you busy and sharp.

Cons

Lack of work life balance. Low pay when compared to the market. Too much emphasis on outsourcing jobs to growth markets. Lack of employee morale these days.

Advice to Senior Management

You are starting to see brain and talent drain. I got 3x my salary outside of IBM at an other fortune 500 while IBM could only increase my bands without salary increases.

Pros

Support a lot IBM customer accounts

Cons

a lot overtime without pay, very cheap company

Pros

My experience is specific to IBM Global Business Services in Canada and I can not speak to other divisions of IBM.

Let me start by saying that IBM and IBM management over the years have been great to me. I started as a new grad in 2005 in Global Business Services, worked hard and my efforts were recognized by the management. In 4 years I got 2 promotions, not very common for a new grad, and was given a few different awards between 2006 - 2009. Early in my career (2006-2009) there were many opportunities for learning, mentoring and networking. IBM also started a program called Corporate Services Corps through which IBM employees had the opportunity to go to different developing countries and work with a local NGO on a development project. I participated in this program, I truly believe this was perhaps on of the most rewarding experiences I had at IBM.

Overall IBM is a good place to start, you can learn a lot if you are on customer facing projects, however you have to be proactive about your own career at IBM.

Cons

My experience is specific to IBM Global Business Services in Canada and I can not speak to other divisions of IBM.

Over the last few years IBM has changed significantly. More focus has been put on the services business and a result more emphasis has been put on utilization and billable hours of employees. In addition IBM has cut down on various costs significantly and the impact has been directly on the employees. Overall the employee satisfaction I believe is at the lowest since 2005.

In terms of cost cutting measures, following are a few examples:
- Managers use to have a fair budget for rewarding high performing employees, the budget has virtually disappeared. Within my first 3 years at IBM I got half a dozen of such awards and since then I have received none

- Bonus payouts have gone down: IBM provides bonuses to high performing employees, the system by which IBM calculates payouts has changed several times, the current system takes in to consideration the performance of IBM GBS globally and since IBM's GBS has been missing it's targets for the last few years, the payout has been reduced to almost nothing.

- Salary raise: Salary raise and promotion rates have dropped significantly, from 10% to 6%

- Education: With more focus on utilization and billable hours, education budget has decreased significantly, There use to be 80 -120 hours of education allocated for each employee, although officially these buckets are still around but education rarely gets approved due to high focus on billable hours

Overall IBM seems to have shifted focus from long term to short term quarterly reports. Employees at GBS are almost treated as sub-contractors and a lot of folks are not happy about this.

Advice to Senior Management

- Get Employees involved, make them feel they are part of the bigger picture, communicate goals clearly
- Increase Employee Recognition, help employees feel good about the effort they are putting into IBM
- Invest in Employee Education

Pros

- Great on resume
 - Worldwide opportunities
 - Lateral career moves possible
 - Cutting-edge in certain domains
 - Long-term opportunities

Cons

- Promotions for extremely high performers difficult
 - Salary increases do not account for much growth
 - Some managers like to protect their "turf"

Advice to Senior Management

- Pay close attention to the top 5% and bottom 10%