IBM reviews

Huge bureaucracy. The company tries to squeeze more and more from its employees: most departments that I saw were understaffed and overloaded. The employee population is aging: fewer young people want to work at IBM. Too much management, too few people doing real work. The company has a very complex and burdensome work accomplishment/assessment yearly cycle, so that employees mostly think about how their yearly review will turn out. Hence a lot of time is taken by the efforts to make the review results look good, rather then solving the real problems. IBM T.J.Watson Research Center used to be a great research lab up until 2002-2003, now it more resembles a subsidiary of IBM Software Division, at best, or a bunch of software engineers used to be thrown to plumb holes of other division's lagging projects, at worst.

Project managers have no ambition and emotional leadership is rampant throughout the organization. SAP training is over-emphasized, but there are few available SAP roles for Associates. Expect to waste your time learning things that will be obsolete by the time you are able to use them. Upward mobility is nonexistent. Nearly everyone is paid the bare minimum, so nearly everyone severely lacks motivation. Those who appear to be motivated seem to be complacent with mediocrity or afraid of dismissal. IBM pretends to be modern but is stuck in 1992. If you are a recent grad considering working here, I strongly suggest that you reconsider.