IBM is a legendary company. You will be proud to be an IBMer for the rest of your life. - Segment Analyst, Market Intelligence IBM Employee Review

4.0
Nov 25, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

* Brand name. IBM is #2 globally recognized brands. When you have IBM on your resume, you get very few questions. It opens several doors * Opportunities. IBM is a huge company that has limitless opportunities. There are several people and life timers at IBM, who are yet to scratch the surface. * Work life balance. IBM is a globally integrated organization. It encourages WFH (after the 1st year of stay at IBM). You will be surprised at how addicted one gets to using Sametime for chatting as well as for scheduling meetings. * Culture. IBM is a very open company. It is a no non-sense company where Senior leadership is very committed to doing the right thing. IBMers have a bias for the right action.

Cons

* Compensation. IBM brand is one of the best in the world. As a result, do not expect to be compensated heavily. * Huge organization. Consequently, things move at a slower pace than you would normally anticipate. But, don't give up so easily. People are committed to doing the right thing and have a bias for the right action. * Global integration is both a boon and a bain. Bain because, a lot of times you never get to see who you are working with on the other side of the table. You will recognize them by their voice and know a lot about them, but you would have never met them in your life.

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5.0
Jun 28, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

good work place environment also

Cons

i dot find any negative thing

4.0
Aug 26, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

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.

Cons

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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IBM Response
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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