Sam and Senior maa]nagement should retire before company is ruined - Software Architect IBM Employee Review

2.0
Jun 21, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Looks good on a resume but do not look at this company for any long term employment. If you work in ales, you can be in a position to earn a lot of money. If you are in the technical ranks, you will have exposure to some interesting technologies. If you are interested in management, you could make a good career at IBM if you can learn to manage upward, never make waves, never challenge directives issued by managers above you, always tell managers above you that they are doing a teriffic job. If you are in the technical area, you can tell your manager you are accomplishing goals that you are not reaching as they do not seem to check unless you do something that may make them look bad to their manager.

Cons

Technical people are treated as if they are a dime a dozen while managers are thought of as non-replaceable regrdless of whether they are competent or not. The current philosophy within the company is to manage upward. Do not challenge directives regardless of how dumb they might be. Do not make any kind of waves. As managers, they surround themselves with people that will only agree with their positions and ideas. There is no medical coverage for any family member unless that family member existed before the company dropped covering any new family members (wife, huband, child). The retirement plan is non-existent unless you qualify for the previous retirement plan (and few do). The technical people are considered a necessary evil and are encouraged to look for jobs else where after a few years so that they do not have to pay technical people what they are worth. The lower managers are poorly trained in management and not involved in what their employees are doing. Most are looking out only for their careers and could care less about their employees or the products being prodiced.

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5.0
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CEO approval
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Pros

Relocation bonus and welcoming team

Cons

Very large and corporate at times

4.0
Aug 26, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Disclaimer: A lot of what I'm writing below of course depends on the work area and management chain. But I found this to be fairly pervasive policies in IBM in my 9+ years with the company. 1. IBM's policies and management are very flexible when it comes to working remotely or accommodating various life situations (sick days, doctor visits, etc.). Management is encouraged to measure an employee by their work and impact, and not by hours spent at their office. 2. Great colleagues! Though unfortunately, many have been leaving due to the instability of IBM's HW development business. 3. At least in my area, there's a high level of flexibility on which projects should I undertake based on my and my management assessment of business impact.

Cons

1. Unfortunately, IBM still uses the "normal distribution" rating system, where at the end of the year each employee is ranked as a top contributor (5%), above average contributor (15%), average contributor (~75%), and bottom contributor (5%). This curve is difficult to apply in the R&D world, where you may have many members of the team working long and hard hours, and end up being "average contributors" at the end of the year, because there just isn't room for all to be top contributors. 2. The above may not be so disturbing, if only IBM didn't practically cancelled all raises, performance bonuses and incentive for the non top-performers. I've had a consistent "above average" rating in the last 4-5 years, and my raise and performance bonus were ridiculous mere 1.5-2% of my salary. Were I rated "average contributor" I would have gotten NOTHING. So you can imagine that people can go year after year without any raise to their salary. From talking to manager friend, this is IBM's way to eliminate the non-top-performers without having to fire them, as part of its direction of reducing US manpower. 3. Hiring freeze in many areas - again, as part of IBM's attempt to reduce its workforce across North America and Europe we see many jobs move to the India and Far East markets. This is of course upsetting to see local teams shrink and disappear, especially when many great local IBM colleagues and experts begin to drop out. From my experience thus far working with India SW teams - they are still very far away from the standards I would have expected from US and Europe based teams. 4. Poor top down communication about company's and divisions' future. Employees learn from rumors and news websites what's about to come...

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IBM Response
10y
Thanks for sharing your experience, and we're glad that you've had a positive experience working with talented colleagues and taking advantage of IBM's programs. IBM is in the midst of a major transformation, --our Systems business is going through its own changes to strengthen competitiveness. Change is never easy. As part of our transformation, we just launched a whole new approach for how we are coaching employees, delivering feedback and managing reviews. No distribution guidelines or what some think of as 'stacked rankings." What's particularly great is that this was co-designed with our employee base from all over the world... to the tune of hundreds of thousands of page views, comments, on-line debates and discussions. IBMers even named the new system Checkpoint, to reflect the regular feedback rituals we're adopting. Managers are more empowered with the new methodology to help them acknowledge the great work of their teams and help their employees develop professionally. These steps and more are showing up in our employee surveys as well. So IBMers are feeling the change. We are confident these changes will help us in continuing to attract and retain great talent.
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