Pros
if you don't mind being lied to, your only chance to succeed is to start carrying your manager's luggage, or to have your parents as IBM's clients.
Cons
One of the first thing you are beiing told once you're on board is that you are now an IBM-er, and you should be proud, bla bla. Do not be fooled. It only means you are no longer a person with a first and last name, with skills, capabilities, etc, you just a resource, a number in an excel table. That's it. Your aspirations, wishes, etc do NOT matter. You should only concern yourself with the profit and shareholder's return on investment. Also, never forget you will only be valued as long as you help your manager look good in front of his manager, and the one above him/her and so on. If you have an idea which turns out to be a good one, it's your manager who gets the credit. If it turned out it was not a good idea it is entirely your fault. Keep in mind you will get 0 support - whatever new idea you bring to the table you must also have the resources to implement it (unless you're a VP and you have the power to "allocate resources"). Every 2 years a new "wave"of VPs appears, and each one brings his own "procedures" and äpproaches"to the table. After 2 years trying to make some sense of them, they are promoted/ they change jobs. And then a new one comes along, the cycle starts all over again. I have seen numerous sons and daughters of clients being hired as IBM-ers, simply because of who their parents were. This on top of the usual parents pushing to have their children hired, choosing a well positioned IBMer as your god father, and so on. During the last "Jam session" ( the purpose of which was to validate the corporate values) the most talked about topic was lack of respect for employees and what can be done to re-instate it. The official results of the Jam mention nothing what so ever about this topic. HR is a joke, they only work for managers, don't give a dime about anyone else. Nobody clearly explains what the processes is for getting a raise, a band increase, being nominated for special educational programs (such as MBAs).
