Mediocre pay and benefits. IBM's salary plan considers your pay to be sufficient for your position as soon as you hit the 50% percentile for industry pay. This is designed to always pay you less than the 50% percentile of what your peers make doing the same job.
IBM recently granted all employees a deferred stock grant as a "Retention Incentive". It's $1000 in stock over 5 years. It's pretty obvious this wasn't designed to retain US employees. Would you bat an eye at an extra 200 a year to stay for 5 years? What a joke.
Extreme cost cutting has reduced the company to a self serve mode of operation. For example: Need to mail a package? Stop writing code and try to figure out how to find a box and tape (hint: they are too cheap to stock these), then box print and mail your own package.
Bi-Annual "culling of the herd":
1. Bad quarter? Layoff 5% of the US work force.
2. Good quarter? Layoff 5% of the US work force after having them train their oversees replacements.
In the future, the US employees will consist of management, and project managers that are managing teams of overseas developers in India, China and the next cheap labor country. Unless you want to be a manager or project manager, my advise is to work somewhere else.
