IBM reviews

I’ll address the most probable rebuttal first: Client Innovation Centers are not a complete representation of IBM, but any company that creates and enables a facet of their organization with this many issues should seriously reevaluate. They do not pay enough for the work you do. This is not just a subjective claim, simple research on the job title at other companies tells you you’re getting underpaid. You do not get the experience/flexibility in experience they claim you get. If you stay with the company for 20 years you may be able to get the exposure you want. But the first 5 o so years, you have virtually no control over what you learn. You can be as motivated and outspoken as you want, but they will put you wherever there is a need. Management is patronizing and disrespectful of our reasonable complaints of being underpaid and (contractually) overworked. The job I accepted listed 50% travel, but the CIC is at the whims of their big clients, so you will probably travel 100% (every Monday - Thursday or Friday). Somehow though, the fault comes back to you as the little pawn of an employee for not reminding everyone higher than you of your travel limits. During Christmas time of 2018, we were asked to forfeit our “use it or lose it” vacation time because “IBM is not doing well in Q4 because of consultant vacation time.” This is the epitome of disrespecting work life balance. Do I think the CEO would have agreed with this, had she been there? Probably not. Does that matter? No. How did a game of bureaucratic, corporate telephone result in multiple managers in multiple different meetings asking employees to not take vacation during the holidays to see their families? Horrible tone at the top.

Where to begin. For one thing, IBM is letting middle management is drive it into the ground. Every step forward taken by very talented engineers and designers is eventually ruined by a complete lack of vision, strategy, and alignment by an unbelievably bloated middle management layer. Marketing teams are allowed to set product strategy based on questionable "market research" and also promises product capabilities to the public that are completely unrealistic (e.g. Watson for Oncology). It borders on unethical at times. There is no money for raises and promotions - unclearness and even dishonesty about this is rampant. There is zero transparency, and absolutely no engagement from HR to support individual employees. Every few months hundreds of employees are "RA'd" ("Resource Action," which = layoff).