IBM reviews

3.9

78% would recommend to a friend

(107,222 total reviews)
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Arvind Krishna

76% approve of CEO

68% positive business outlook

IBM has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 107,222 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The IBM employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Tecnologías de la información industry (3.9 stars).

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107K reviews
1.0
Oct 29, 2019

A dying company and a Last place anyone would want to work at

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

None for a skilled person.

Cons

Now unlike most Indian IBMers, I happen to be skilled, knowledgeable and experienced. I do agree with the other posts on your site regarding the Indian workforce of IBM - 90% are unskilled, don't have the requisite knowledge and have been hired to make up the numbers/FTEs for GDF. Most of the work is messed-up and the 10% who have the knowledge, spend all their time fixing the crap of others or the mess just grows. Is there any wonder why clients hate IBM and are cancelling contracts by the dozen. Its frustration hell in IBM India(especially for anyone who's talented, skilled and hard-working). People who are on bench because they're bloody incapable get transferred to some other department(where they have no clue/skill-set as to what they are doing to ensure they screw that up too). Managers are the most idiotic bunch I've come across in my career - they are technically zero, they don't have any managerial soft skills and most specialize in sycophancy(whether it be giving rank idiot subordinates good ratings or cosying up to their superiors for better ratings for themselves). Diversity is everything - most of these "diversity" candidates join because they know they can "work from home"/"hardly work" as there is no accountability for what you do. Merit isn't anywhere in the equation. You'll be hard-pressed to find any skill-set among these hires - they're that incompetent - but hired so senior management can plug these numbers to higher-ups. Most of the talented(not more than 10% of the workforce) are looking out for opportunities elsewhere and leaving in droves, those who remain have other compulsions - some have businesses/consultancies going on the side and the IBM work culture allows a second income comfortably. Some have family compulsions and need to devote time for personal reasons and hence stick around. The rest 90% won't get jobs outside IBM and are hence like furniture hanging around(and squeezing the lemon dry) until the whole thing collapses around them. Whenever anything screws up, each department passes the ball on to the next(as none of them have the skill-set or a clue of what is going on) as none of them have an idea of what is needed to fix the problem. So the mess keeps increasing till the client gets tired of the crap and terminates the account. No accountability for anything, so even the managers who messed up just get moved around and ensure the screw up the next account. Why do even clients think of IBM - confounds me. I wouldn't hire IBM in a million years with the quality of people which are around. Most US IBMers are good, capable people BUT the same problem that afflicts IBM India, abounds there too. Sycophancy and "diversity" hiring is rampant and hence incapable people are there too BUT the numbers aren't as skewed as India - far lower. From my interactions with US employees, career advancement is based on "who you know" rather than "what you know". This is essentially an IBM wide problem. Most IBM Managers are unskilled beyond belief and the salary packages which they are at - they wouldn't be hired by anybody outside and hence they have no choice. They too are like afore-mentioned furniture in the organization. Sadly, IBM can't be fixed. Most managers are incapable and firing thousands of managers would be the last option(prior to that coming about, those who do the work would get fired/quit) and nobody would be left to do the work. Ask any ex-IBMer whether he/she'd join back - bloody unlikely. So where would people who're capable come from - nowhere. IBM should just shut down and call it a day. This is by far, the worst organization I've worked at in terms of professionalism, work ethic, integrity(Yep, the thing which is most harped on, is the one thing which is completely absent).

1.0
Aug 12, 2018

Bad Management. Stay Away.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Brand Name (only thing left will help your career) Flexible work hours

Cons

Bad management for the entire branch. One obvious sign: the top management is filled with relatives and friends. Slow promotion. The center tries to put as much as possible requirements to block your promotion. For a small amount of salary raise with the base is already far below the average, they need you to provide an incredible amount of evidence that you deserve it. Yet, there are chances they say NO to it in the end. If it’s approved, you’ll have to wait a couple of months to get the actual result even sometimes the entire process just happen in the center which should just take days or weeks. But if you’re “ favored”, you’re very likely to get a fast promotion, skip bands and good pay with little work. No passion, no vision. The management level talks about the budget all the time instead of vision and projects. Your life will about the billed hours. Yet there are flexible working hours and work from home policy, you won’t benefit from them too much if you want to stay there for the long-term and be promoted. It has lots of small easy projects without any challenges. The big projects are very likely to collapse without real results. Lack of respect for the people who do real work. There are a few amounts of people who handle all the real problems of the projects. They’re overwhelmed and not respected. The managers say they appreciate your efforts but they are really not. Good people leave all the time and the management level don’t care. Poor work environment. Don’t even think about anything nice, there is no coffee machine and you can imagine the rest. Refuse to change. All the decisions are top-down (normal in a big company), and the top management has no intention to change with serious problems like people left and projects collapse. They don’t care about individual success at all. The management style feels like 30 years ago in a bad way. All these may sound very negative, but unfortunately, they’re all true. People leave as soon as they see these issues. Lots of people left after staying here less than one year. Stay away from it if you have other choices.

1.0
Jan 1, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You can do anything at IBM - lots of room to move laterally. You are given a lot of room to develop your skills and are mostly autonomous on your projects if you are a senior resource. IBM brand is tarnishing but still impressive in the industry. I loved working here and remember what it used to be.

Cons

One word - "co-location". The death sentence for IBM US marketing and all high performers -- co-location drove out the best performers into the arms of competitors (myself included). I still have contacts within IBM and am told executing any marketing tactic is virtually impossible. Too much IP went out the door w/the best employees and the new collar newbies lack knowledge of the market and products. All of my team left to go to competitors vs. co-locate to Austin, TX . We were a successful remote team who worked with WW resources so moving to 1 location to "be together" is frankly absurd.

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