Hard to Stand Out, but Great Company Culture
Pros
In my experience as an intern, IBM had a great company culture that really allowed for work-life balance and encouraged collaboration. It also did a great job at inviting and making interns feel welcome to connect with IBMers in a personal way. The internship program was very supportive and not high pressure or competitive, which was really nice and made it very easy to feel enthusiastic about – and focus on – the work I was doing. Their internships pay well compared to other previous internships I did, and overall I had a great internship experience.
Cons
One of the downsides about interning at IBM (which I think is probably the same for most companies of its size) is that it's so large, that it's hard to really standout and get exposure. First of all, I believe there were 80+ marketing interns in the program (or some large number around that, I can't remember exactly). Interns were put into teams of 3-4, and each team was tasked with a specific project for the summer, across a variety of different marketing functions. The teams were assigned project managers, who were great and engaged, but the size of the program meant that it was really hard to get and exposure. Connecting with higher-level IBMers (or IBMers in other areas of marketing) was also challenging at times because it doesn't occur naturally through the work you do, which means that it often depends on whether or not they have time to meet with you whenever you reach out. [NOTE: My internship was during a time when everything was still entirely virtual, so it's possible that these cons are a result of that. If they go back to in-person internships at some point, then it's possible that these challenges might not me as prominent.]
