IBM Senior Software Engineer reviews

Bureaucracy and politics. Not behaving like a software company, limited innovation

IBM is a massive bureaucracy. I imagine only working for the government or defense companies could be worse in terms of overhead. Process, process, process. If you come from a startup culture, you will almost definitely be displeased with it. And because of the process overhead, so often you'll churn your time not doing anything productive. IBM also has the typical problem of promoting its engineers to their lowest level of incompetency. I guess that is good for the individual but not good for the engineer. Just because you are good at coding something doesn't mean you should be an architect. I'd rather see focus on salary raises for those that are great at their job and less focus on promoting beyond their skill set. I see too many architects that don't make good decisions because they were promoted too quickly.