This is the worst company I've ever worked at - Recensione dipendente - Automation Engineer presso IBM

1,0
27 dic 2023
Consiglia
Gradimento del CEO
Pronostico commerciale

Vantaggi

I'm sorry, but really none at all

Svantaggi

I was hired for my second job after working with Python at a previous company. I had just completed the Austin Community College courses in Python and Java. As soon as I was hired, I was sat at a desk and told to manually test a website. I asked for github access and was denied, even read-access. I asked the PMs to include me in scrums and assign me tickets, the PM never talked to me. Every time I would go to his desk, he would say he was busy, every single time. I had no idea what features the devs were working on. When I tried to ask devs directly, my boss would say I was 'bothering' them. I was told not to talk to the devs ever. I was told I was hired for my 'customer service' abilities and shouldn't expect to code. My boss hadn't added me to any jira boards or introduced me to a single person in development. I brought up to my boss how I was expecting an engineering org to work with QA- that I would be involved in scrum ceremonies where work was ticketed, assigned to a developer, and then tasks assigned to QA for either manual or automation. I was told by my boss to instead just keep testing the same UI over and over "like driving a car up and down the road, then left and right, then diagnonal". I was baffled. I also mentioned that I was hired as an automation engineer and my boss told me "not to worry about that". A few months in, the company announced that they were switching to a python test automation project, which is something I had recent experience in. When I asked to work on that, I was told I didn't have a Computer Science degree and didn't have engineering experience, so I was denied. I tried to bypass management at this point and talk to the engineers on that time. At one point I told someone I was sleeping 4 hours a day because I was required to be in both the 5:15AM standup and the 11:15PM standup by my boss. This standup included a bunch of people in India that I had no idea what relation they had to me and seemed to be working on a different project. I just knew I was mandated to be on the call. I was also taking 9 hours of college credit to prove I was "good enough" to code, even though I did have an MIS degree and several years of experience when they hired me. IBM was clear that they only counted Computer Science degrees so I was taking classes that would qualify me for that degree. The person I was talking to about my sleep issues told me 4 hours of sleep is too many, I should only sleep 2 hours a day. I should also mention that IBM's campus was pretty far from where I lived and having to attend both a late night and early morning standup was wearing on me so much that I rented out my condo at a loss of $100 a month to a friend and then got a studio apartment near IBM for the year. During this time period, I had to switch my internet but needed to secure the apartment before AT&T would switch my line over. Once I got the keys to the apartment, I requested to move my internet and was told it would take about 10 business days. My boss told me I needed to get internet 9 days earlier or I'd be fired, even though I'd already escalated the request and was given the earliest date. Keep in mind, I was ONLY moving because of IBM's standups. Not having internet for 9 days would be added to my PIP. Six months in, I was also told there was a issue in the code bubbling up from customer service. When two people pressed a button in the UI at the same time, there was an API error. I was told that I was directly responsible for fixing this issue. I asked how I could be responsible for a race condition when not only was I not the developer, but I wasn't even given github access and able to see the repo that was causing the issue. I was put on a PIP. I quit this job the morning and hour I was hired a year later. I was unable to quit earlier because I took a signing bonus that I couldn't afford to pay back before then. I was in a lot of medical debt when I took the job. The nature of the work also made it very hard to get another job. I had no idea how to present what I was doing in interviews. Eventually to interview better, I started a github project using my own name and started automating the public facing website. This project never integrated with IBM as a company and was never was looked at by a single person except me, but it was the only experience I was able to get at this job doing the thing they supposedly hired me for. Also, the benefits are awful. Due to a chronic illness, i usually max out my insurance. IBM's max was 15k so I incurred 15k in medical expenses the year I worked for IBM on top of my previous medical debt.

Esplora altre recensioni su IBM

5,0
19 mag 2026
Consiglia
Gradimento del CEO
Pronostico commerciale

Vantaggi

Great work environment and benefits

Svantaggi

Low salary, not much training received

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...

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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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