Shocking culture that comes down from the top. Their main focus is on short-term financial success without considering the impact on their workforce or the client. They say "client comes first" but I have never seen IBM encourage this behaviour internally, what they really mean is "bring in the money first, then Client comes second". Financial gain is so important to them that it encouraged to bend accounting rules as much as possible, even if it means a loss in the future - as long as they can get the gain now.
Senior management bark down the phone at people and you're made to feel guilty if you can't attend certain calls (on Saturdays...).
Employees don't take responsibility for their actions. This is not out of not-wanting to be responsible and own actions, it is out of fear of the repocussions should something go wrong.
There is absolutely no movement for progression or promotion (on GTS side, anyway). Yes, it's a good starting salary for a Graduate, however by the end of the 2yr Grad scheme you will be earning less than the market value compared to your non-IBM peers - they say they compare your salary to a PMR aka Market Value, yet this PMR hasn't been updated in years and is different for men vs women.
Immediate-management don't have the time to actually support their team in career development, as they have a full-time job to do and being a people manager is just an additional task on the side.
Finally, they're off-shoring everything. They have a 60/20/20 vision aka 60% resource far-shore (India), 20% near-shore (Slovakia/Bratislava) and 20% on-shore (UK). Not only do remote colleagues not have the skills to step-into the shoes of those they are replacing in the UK (and by replacement I mean made-redundant), but the cultures don't support each other. In the UK, employees work long-hours until the job is done. In India, colleagues don't know how to think outside of a process or list of instructions for e.g. if something goes wrong and the way around it isn't on the process list then they will just stop and not do anything, they won't even come back and tell you it's not working. You will be constantly chasing them. In east-Europe, if it's 17.01 they go home. So be prepared to have to work double hard to cater for the slack elsewhere. In addition, the IMI service in India is fairly new, about 3yrs old. This means that the colleague skills are way below-par and still being trained. About 70% of my stress was caused by IMI's inability to complete a job.
If you want to work for a company that is all about the business and dollar signs, IBM is for you. If you want a great culture, progression and support - find somewhere else.
p.s. There's no free tea/coffee - you even have to pay 25p for hot water. Just to show you how low these guys go to save a buck...
