IBM reviews

3.9

78% would recommend to a friend

(107,214 total reviews)
avatar

Arvind Krishna

76% approve of CEO

68% positive business outlook

IBM has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 107,214 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The IBM employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

107K reviews
1.0
Oct 6, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You get to work from home, and you some what get to managed your own time. Some of the coworkers are nice to work with.

Cons

Caviat: this is a huge organization, so I can only speak about the one group that I was working with. You have no control over your working hours: One day you could be working from 6am - 6pm and three days later you could be working from 6pm - 6am. You constantly working over the weekends and holidays. You only get paid if you get paged: They could assign you to work 56hrs as backup on call for the week, but you will only get paid if you get paged. So it is possible that you will not get paid for the whole week, even if you are responsible for responding to any pages within 15 minutes. You will be spending 50% or more of your time doing paper work. You will be responsible for figuring out how to migrate among the huge bureaucracy and get the right permission to get things done. It is your fault if you didn't get the right permission. Their internal documentation and information sharing system (email, ticketing, calendar...) is arcane and hard to use. Some people will assumed you know everything, even if it is not documented anywhere; or nobody has told you. Lots of laid off without any notice. They gave a whole bunch of us the option of either moving to Dubuque, Iowa -- with out moving expenses -- or get laid off. Wages are like third world country.

3.0
Aug 29, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Smart colleagues Plenty of internal education available frequent new acquisitions to challenge the mind Present in almost every imaginable customer and environment from the mundane to the cutting edge.

Cons

Employment cost reduction has become so intrusive that employees now feel like encumbrances, not useful assets to IBM. Zero job security outside the executive ranks. Arcane and undefendable internal processes. Profound lack of mutuality in the incentives of different IBMers even on the same team.

2.0
Aug 24, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

All of the best reasons to work at IBM are gone. They used to have great benefits. Management used to care (somewhat) about their employees. I have heard the stories from IBM-ers who worked for IBM starting in the 1960s. All of them say that it's not IBM any more. It is an empty shell of what it used to be. Outsourcing has turned a once-great computer manufacturer into a services-only based business.

Cons

Education is why I left IBM. I was set to take a Masters Degree, and asked my Manager if there would be any time considerations for my education. The manager said 'no.' Now mind you, I had given IBM hours of free overtime to the tune of 18 hour workdays very often in order to fulfill client needs and meet deadlines. The manager was adamant, he absolutely would give me NO TIME CONSIDERATION for a Masters Degree. IBM *used* to brag about how they supported employees' educational pursuits by paying for schooling. PSHAW. They stopped paying for low-class employees' educations in 2001, after 9-11-2001. Then, they stopped paying for Team Leads' education in 2003-2004. They might still pay if you are a manager or Sr. Manager, but now their former boast rings hollow. Anyhow, I quit IBM in order to take my degree and finished in the top of the class. I will only go back to IBM if all other opportunities dry up for me. IBM is like one of the Pyramids in Egypt. There was once greatness there, but all that is left are archaeological ruins. And, the ruins are not great wonders of the world, they are just ruins of a once-great business that had values.

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