IBM Reviews in Toronto, ON Area

Pros

leading edge, great compensation, highly professional and intelligent people

Cons

work life balance, long hours

Advice to Senior Management

no comment

Pros

There are a lot of guru who can assistant you in any time and help with any technical question or issue.

Cons

For supplemental position, there are not any benefits and vacation. IBM can terminate contract in any time before ending period.

Advice to Senior Management

Management team is working very good. Team leaders in the contact with stuff all days during the meetings and private conversation.

Pros

Flexible work hours and work from home.

Cons

Management not appreciating hard work and long work hours.

Pros

Work for Fortune 100 giant. Will be plus on resume for next job. Flexible work hours and shifts.

Cons

No opportunity for growth. Feeling of being expendable never goes away. More work is piled on but no appreciation in salary. Been here over 2 years and no performance reviews. And even if there was, very clear it would not have meant any monetary value.

Pros

Great Research Lab in the company

Cons

Management does not recognize team's contribution and focusing on offshore to cut cost

Pros

The people you work with are all very hard working, you can learn a lot from the different departments you are working with. Networking is huge, often projects span over several countries - which can also allow for travel. Projects look great on the resume - with IBM's end to end solutions, we'd deliver full working products in house - and being able to collaborate with the people involved makes it all the more satisfying.

Cons

Can be difficult managing work life balance - many of us are bogged down by a utilization number that we need to aim towards - but the system is flawed because the number goes down when we go on vacation, get sick, etc, so we are bound to work more hours on average just to keep our utilization up. This makes work life balance hard because we are constantly thinking about our utilization when we are working and on the bench. It can be argued that this is used to improve productivity - but I feel work moral is low from it, and gives us more stress than needed.

Pay can also be higher :) -IBM isn't as generous to the employees as one may think, bonuses also aren't very high. Also getting promoted is quite a difficult process from what I hear (cannot say for sure since I have not tried yet though).

Advice to Senior Management

I think we need to improve work morale - make work life enjoyable. This may include setting up a social committee and going out once in a while to get to know each other, or taking the new employee out to lunch as a team. Make people feel like they aren't just working numbers.

Pros

Can work from home
Can maintain home / life balance
Can work on flexible hours
Offers many free educational courses
Culture drives innovation

Cons

Job outsourcing is a common trend
Lacks high growth job area
Pay is just above average
Acquisitions made by IBM can introduce job instability

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more job growth to Toronto
Focus more on organic growth and not acquisition growth
Ask division VPs to commit to a 5 year long term plan

Pros

The teams you work on are extremely supportive, and if you're a relative talented engineer, you won't feel too stressed out by work. You also get to talk to clients occasionally, and there is alot of room to grow into management.

Cons

Processes are a bit slow, but this comes naturally with the size of the company. You might get bored if you want some extremely technical and challenging problems to work on as most of the work is to develop business applications.

Pros

Hard work and long hours, but excellent pay + benefits.

Cons

Long hours. Had to work weekends for several years (2000 - 2006). Things are much better now.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide better recognition to employees that perform well.

Pros

Steady job, alright work-life balance

Cons

No Career enablement, barely any training

Advice to Senior Management

take better care of your people