IBM reviews

Today employment at IBM has nothing but negatives. The bureaucracy is far worse than ever. In order to accomplish anything at all, one must fill out an endless stream of web forms, request databases, spreadsheets, management approvals, etc. A simple change can take weeks to get all the "ducks" aligned. The chance for career advancement is almost nonexistent. The internal jobs website has been revamped to make it almost unusable. When applying for a job, the hiring manager doesn't even give the applicant the courtesy of a response. This has happened to me on many occasions. Most of the folks that I've talked to have said the same thing. Apparently it's now considered an acceptable practice to not even acknowledge receipt of an application. I guess that should be expected given the fact that employees are now referred to as "resources" and not people. If I had a dime for every time I heard a manager refer to employees as "resources" I could retire today. Employees are continuously bombarded with 'take aways' and benefit reductions. Pension freezes, pay cuts, band reductions, forced overtime for exempt employees, offshoring, employee layoffs and a blatant sense of dishonesty coming from upper management. These are all part of everyday life at IBM now.

Bureaucracy of moving up the ladder is very challenging unless you have the right contacts or you devote many extra hours of your already expected overtime hours on an engagement. Too many hours have to be put into the company to make yearly goals and this does not equate to work life balance.