IBM reviews

3.9

78% would recommend to a friend

(107,123 total reviews)
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Arvind Krishna

76% approve of CEO

68% positive business outlook

IBM has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 107,123 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
4.0
Oct 28, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

For a large company with over 330,000 employees, IBM does many things right as an employer. They pay competitively and have a solid benefits package. They have a great internal training program for things like management and project management. They delegate much of the human resources (HR) responsibilities to the first-line managers, so that key HR decisions are being made by those with the most knowledge about the employee instead of by HR representatives who couldn't pick the employee out of a line-up. They have a strong mentoring program (people who say they don't have a strong mentoring program probably weren't willing to put in the effort and time necessary to make those mentoring relationships fruitful). IBM is large enough that employees can have multiple careers without ever changing companies or having to rollover their 401k.

Cons

Anytime there is a large number of people, communications become harder. Project managers or engineers might think about the number of communication channels, which is n(n-1)/2 where n = number of stakeholders (Ref: PMBOK, 3rd ed.). For 330,000 employees, that means IBM has 54.4 billion communication channels. Obviously that is difficult to manage and work within. Recognizing that there is an inherent challenge in the liquidity of knowledge and information can help employees find ways to solve those problems, such as developing wikis for small teams. The other downside to having that many employees means that every time the company spends $3 on each employee, you just spent $1 million. Many employees don't understand this problem, and instead complain about only receiving free ice cream in the cafeteria after project milestone is reached when their cousin at the unprofitable, but well funded, start-up is getting free coffee and soda every day.

1.0
Nov 2, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

People (excluding upper mgmt) are pretty cool and nice to work with, inclusive only because of people who care that work here.

Cons

I don’t trust this company, they trashed our retirement benefits, if you’re young look to a real company with a 401k match, you will leave millions on the table here even with decent comp which you won’t get anyways. If you work here you’ll get more work and less people to do it, because everyone wants to leave and when they do ibm won’t hire to replace them. Ibms current mantra is do stuff faster, but they won’t pay or hire to do that, they’ll just expect you to work more. And cut your benefits so you’re cheap or quit. This is not a long-term company.

1.0
Mar 30, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good learning opportunities if you network well with other employees and search for applicable classes online.

Cons

Terrible lack of involvement of management structure with little to no guidance given about the apprenticeship or completing it's requirements. The mentors were assigned but given no instruction or incentives to teach, often treating apprentices as secretaries, handing off their menial administrative tasks or refusing to put in any extra work to teach them at all. All the education and experience received was gained by networking with project managers other than my mentor and were hours I volunteered to complete on top of my regular account work, which I received no extra pay for but was working or studying up to 80 hours a week. My Front Line Manager was constantly on vacation or working from home and never addressed any of the issues or concerns that were raised about the apprenticeship. One mentor scolded or talked down to me regularly, so loudly, that multiple employees could hear and expressed concern about. However, when this issue was brought to my manager, I was treated as though I was the problem and forced to give justification as to why I should not be treated with such disrespect. Since the apprentice salary charges educational hours to IBM rather than individual accounts, they are assigned to accounts that are overburdened or maxed out on hours to be used for free labor and after the apprenticeship, any jobs offered were not market salary rates and were barely even above current earnings.

Viewing 196 - 198 of 107,123 Reviews

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