IBM reviews

3.9

78% would recommend to a friend

(107,269 total reviews)
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Arvind Krishna

77% approve of CEO

68% positive business outlook

IBM has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 107,269 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
Aug 8, 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good training opportunities network with professionals across globe flexibilty of work timing Brand name.

Cons

Worst in employee compensation - especially if you are a long timer in the company - dont ever stay for more than 4-5 years!!... IBM benchmarks your salary to be the median of the worst in industry and best salary in industry. That means if you will never be paid the best salary, in this company how much ever good you are!!... Long timers will get stagnated with not much career growth. No good employee benefits except for trainings that are available. Performance evaluation is the worst that I have seen in the industry. Its all subjective and driven by the perceptions of the manager - Your manager is the god and be always in his/her good books - that is the key for survival (even if you dont do any work)!!... . Every thing (your promotion, hike, bonus or any thing else) - all are linked with your annual evaluation rating (so called "PBC rating" - 1,2,3.. etc..) and surrounds around that magic number. If you are not in the top 10% list of your team... forget about any good hike or promotion or benefits for the next one year. Worst HR policies... The actual HR team hides behind the so called "People Managers" and drive the policies through them. The people managers act as puppets in the hands of HR with no good power to take any meaningful decisions. No accountability for the actual HR team on employees. The company was very good when it was a small organization in the late 90s to early 2K... Now its just another government like massive junk organization with lot of red tapism in it. Worst policies and procedures... Not at all employee friendly. They boast a lot about their market leadership position in innovation, brand name, technology advancement etc. etc.. but all those are done by a small % of the company's workforce in some labs in some other foreign countries... as a regular normal employee who work in usual projects you will never get to see any of those stuff in your lifetime nor will be able to be a part of those...

3.0
Jul 21, 2011

IBM was great until it began tilting East

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great, knowlegable colleagues Very professional workplace climate Feels good to be associated with the global leader in our sector (technology services) Smart management

Cons

Low morale and declining engagement (so much so, HR killed the engagement survey) If you're in a staff position in the US or any G-7 country, i.e., Finance, HR, IT, Marketing, etc., your job is going to China or India this year or next

3.0
Jun 30, 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

There is practically an unlimited amount of trianing opportunity here. The ability to switch groups / careers is also a definite plus. The IBM name carries with it quite a bit of prestige. Ability to innovate and be creative is superb here.

Cons

Getting a promotion beyond a certain point requires an extreme amount of documentation and can take much longer than needed if you hapeen to accomplish goals outside of their career framework timeframe. This is a profit center, and management is not timid about expressing this. They lay off folks pretty much every quarter, but also do quite a bit of hiring. Stock price is the largest driver in this company. Innovation is a distant second.

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