Terrible Apprenticeship Experience
Pros
Good learning opportunities if you network well with other employees and search for applicable classes online.
Cons
Terrible lack of involvement of management structure with little to no guidance given about the apprenticeship or completing it's requirements. The mentors were assigned but given no instruction or incentives to teach, often treating apprentices as secretaries, handing off their menial administrative tasks or refusing to put in any extra work to teach them at all. All the education and experience received was gained by networking with project managers other than my mentor and were hours I volunteered to complete on top of my regular account work, which I received no extra pay for but was working or studying up to 80 hours a week. My Front Line Manager was constantly on vacation or working from home and never addressed any of the issues or concerns that were raised about the apprenticeship. One mentor scolded or talked down to me regularly, so loudly, that multiple employees could hear and expressed concern about. However, when this issue was brought to my manager, I was treated as though I was the problem and forced to give justification as to why I should not be treated with such disrespect. Since the apprentice salary charges educational hours to IBM rather than individual accounts, they are assigned to accounts that are overburdened or maxed out on hours to be used for free labor and after the apprenticeship, any jobs offered were not market salary rates and were barely even above current earnings.
