IBM reviews

Training : almost all e-training now, much of what is on offer is poor quality video or audio recordings of people not skilled in presenting material. Embarrassing how often these internal training sessions lose the network or can't transfer sharing the screen to someone else; or (worst) feature some executive with absolutely nothing to say, but taking 40 minutes to say it. Often these latter are mandatory and of course everybody switches them on and goes and makes a coffee. 10 years ago IBM had a planned annual process where you agreed training with your manager, obtained quality training (because it was in your plan); now you are presented with HOURS and HOURS of mandatory dross put together cheaply to let our CEO think we are all being trained in the latest technology. Pensions quality has been driven down and down (court cases still being heard on this), so although it is better than average, don't expect it to stay that way Everything that can be sold or cut seems to have been in a desparate attempt to hit Sam Palmisano's ill-judged promise to hit $20 by 2015 revenue. It was obvious to most people a while ago it wasn't going to happen. Executives took a loooooooonnnng time to wake up and cancel that impossible dream. You have a lot of leeway due to hands off management; but this is largely because no manager seems to want to say/write/do anything that they could be judged for later, so they sit on their hands stay silent. From all of the above you might not be surprised to learn that morale is lower than low. New starter graduates might find it quite an exciting environment, most will move on when they fail to get a rise for 5 years. Redundancies are now an annual tradition, a big re-org this year is mostly moving the deckchairs on the Titanic I'm afraid and has had the effect of freezing any decision making process for several months as no manager wants to be responsible for deciding anything they might be held culpable for later.

Complete disjoint between senior US management and the rest of the company, pure short termism in their approach to satisfying their customer(The shareholder not the true client). They erode any value from companies they buy. They do not care about the employee or the client only the shareholder, and who are the biggest shareholders.......the board. They constantly restrict your ability to do your job yet expect you to support the sales guys in selling as much as possible, even if that means giving ridiculous discounts just to get anything even if it means undermining any future market value. They say IBM is a great place to have lots of careers and move jobs, that's because its full of people constantly moving and hiding when they mess things up! what about those who want to do one thing really well!