IBM Software Developer reviews

Upper management lacks any genuine concern for the company culture or quality of its offerings - having turned to ugly financial manipulations to prop up its P/E ratio where once IBM's business and valuation was built on its loyal workerforce, reputation for service, and superior technology. You will make friends with good people and then have to console them through being victims of arbitrary cuts because the executive "leadership" at IBM seems to need someone (other than themselves, of course) to fall on the sword when there is an earnings miss. Compensation leaves something to be desired, as do opportunities for advancement when positions are being eliminated ahead of you rather than opening as vacancies that need to be filled. Less than a year after leaving IBM for a startup, I'm earning more than twice what I did at IBM and filling a much broader role than was available to me in my old department. ...that said, the skills (both technological and political) I developed at IBM have been critical to my success since leaving. So it's not a bad deal if you think of it as a wallet-friendly, hands-on alternative to graduate school (and make sure you're putting in enough effort to walk away with both you and the team you worked with feeling there's something to show for the time you spent there).

Bureaucracy. So much of it. Ridiculous new employee tests. Filling in forms. Ridiculous email client everyone has to use. So many company wide spam emails. It's as if they don't really want you to be working.