IBM Senior Software Engineer reviews

There is really no single valid opinion about working at IBM, since almost half a million employees world wide have different environments, managers, etc. Working with remote colleagues is mostly fine, but can sometimes be a challenge. In the wort cases, I have seen teams of 10 or 12 people, none of whom work in the same location. This can be challenging.

Research is now much more focused on funding than on innovation, with the result being that more and more focus is put on coming up with ways to make the current product portfolio stronger. This is difficult, especially when you consider that the typical Research Staff Member is a Ph. D. with little practical knowledge of how the products are used, and with little to no access to customer feedback. This results in projects that are irrelevant to the product line or are redundant to work being done already by the product staff. If you are not working on a project like this but something disruptive you often have to sell it to the people who are being disrupted (called "finding a catcher"); oftentimes these people are so vested in the current product that they may spend their efforts killing your work rather than embracing it.