Arrived via acquisition, absorbed and cast aside - Recensione dipendente - Advisory Software Engineer presso IBM

1,0
2 apr 2017
Consiglia
Gradimento del CEO
Pronostico commerciale

Vantaggi

The only pro I can state was when they built Top Golf next door. Made it easy to escape the soul sucking numbness that is IBM. The 401k match used to be great until they changed it to only occur in December instead of with each paycheck. The office is next to the Domain which has some great lunch choices, so you've got that going for you.

Svantaggi

If you arrive via acquisition, things will be great until Transfer of Business occurs. Once you reach that milestone, anything you enjoyed about your old company will be swept away with meaningless corporate double-speak and pointless meetings. My team was about 60 people when we were brought on board, and after three years only 5 remain. The entire point of US based IBM is to fire all senior people, outsource all work overseas, and hire recent graduates for minimal salaries. The entire time I was at IBM, there was zero positive feedback from upper level management, which is ironic since IBM acquired my company because we were beating them left and right in the market. The acquisitions only occur to remove competition. Other teams will absorb your product and fight for the scraps. Once Transfer of Business and Bluewashing are complete, you are expendable. Everything IBM does is to encourage US based employees to quit. Changing the 401k match to only occur once a year was another example of this mentality. Stack ranking employees and firing a set percentage every quarter has occurred at IBM every year for the past decade. Zero perks like coffee or even water, obsolete technology, terrible internal tools like Lotus Notes, complete lack of concern for the team. The only thing that matters is the stock price and delivering dividends to the stockholders. Respect for employees is not even on the list. The benefits are minimal. IBM health insurance charges you per child, up to six kids. If you have a larger family you will be paying massively for poor coverage. 401k match is insulting, the only free perk is water in the water fountains. Even the benefit of working from home is being removed, which makes sense since IBM frowns on any type of 'perk' or 'benefit' for the rank-and-file employees. My advice, don't even consider working here. You will not be appreciated in any way. If you are acquired, leave once your stock vests and don't bother contributing while there. Anything you used to love about your company is meaningless once you were acquired by this place.

Esplora altre recensioni su IBM

5,0
12 mag 2026
Freelance anonimo
Consiglia
Gradimento del CEO
Pronostico commerciale

Vantaggi

Amazing work culture with amazing all.

Svantaggi

Amazing employment culture and amazing seating.

4,0
26 ago 2014
Consiglia
Gradimento del CEO
Pronostico commerciale

Vantaggi

Disclaimer: A lot of what I'm writing below of course depends on the work area and management chain. But I found this to be fairly pervasive policies in IBM in my 9+ years with the company. 1. IBM's policies and management are very flexible when it comes to working remotely or accommodating various life situations (sick days, doctor visits, etc.). Management is encouraged to measure an employee by their work and impact, and not by hours spent at their office. 2. Great colleagues! Though unfortunately, many have been leaving due to the instability of IBM's HW development business. 3. At least in my area, there's a high level of flexibility on which projects should I undertake based on my and my management assessment of business impact.

Svantaggi

1. Unfortunately, IBM still uses the "normal distribution" rating system, where at the end of the year each employee is ranked as a top contributor (5%), above average contributor (15%), average contributor (~75%), and bottom contributor (5%). This curve is difficult to apply in the R&D world, where you may have many members of the team working long and hard hours, and end up being "average contributors" at the end of the year, because there just isn't room for all to be top contributors. 2. The above may not be so disturbing, if only IBM didn't practically cancelled all raises, performance bonuses and incentive for the non top-performers. I've had a consistent "above average" rating in the last 4-5 years, and my raise and performance bonus were ridiculous mere 1.5-2% of my salary. Were I rated "average contributor" I would have gotten NOTHING. So you can imagine that people can go year after year without any raise to their salary. From talking to manager friend, this is IBM's way to eliminate the non-top-performers without having to fire them, as part of its direction of reducing US manpower. 3. Hiring freeze in many areas - again, as part of IBM's attempt to reduce its workforce across North America and Europe we see many jobs move to the India and Far East markets. This is of course upsetting to see local teams shrink and disappear, especially when many great local IBM colleagues and experts begin to drop out. From my experience thus far working with India SW teams - they are still very far away from the standards I would have expected from US and Europe based teams. 4. Poor top down communication about company's and divisions' future. Employees learn from rumors and news websites what's about to come...

636
avatar
Risposta di IBM
10y
Thanks for sharing your experience, and we're glad that you've had a positive experience working with talented colleagues and taking advantage of IBM's programs. IBM is in the midst of a major transformation, --our Systems business is going through its own changes to strengthen competitiveness. Change is never easy. As part of our transformation, we just launched a whole new approach for how we are coaching employees, delivering feedback and managing reviews. No distribution guidelines or what some think of as 'stacked rankings." What's particularly great is that this was co-designed with our employee base from all over the world... to the tune of hundreds of thousands of page views, comments, on-line debates and discussions. IBMers even named the new system Checkpoint, to reflect the regular feedback rituals we're adopting. Managers are more empowered with the new methodology to help them acknowledge the great work of their teams and help their employees develop professionally. These steps and more are showing up in our employee surveys as well. So IBMers are feeling the change. We are confident these changes will help us in continuing to attract and retain great talent.
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