Pros
Great work life balance. Management will accommodate you for your family need. Many years back, my wife suffered from a rare chronicle decease and required hospitalization and then home care. My manager basically allowed me working from home (and hospital) all the time while she we being treated and recovering from the illness. I really appreciate that. Furthermore, the base pay is very competitive here at IBM Research, although bonus is almost non-existent nowadays. Working atmosphere is very friendly and people are mostly nice and cooperative. If you are a female and at a child bearing age, IBM in general is very accommodating, even more so in IBM Research.
Cons
IBM as it is now is the antithesis of successful start-ups and their even more successful descendants (the like of Google, Facebook etc.) There is a lack of youthful energy here. More of us endeavor to try to save (or change depending who you talk to) the dying business model and only a few have the luxury of being given the space to be truly innovative. There is a great brain drain going on. Really smart people are quitting left and right to go the the aforementioned companies. For many of us, we are "Research" in name only. Sure we have the great "Watson" fame, but most of us toil on old IBM technologies and try to squeeze out one more drop of competitiveness out of the outdated systems and tools. While things here are going downhill slow motion style, the rank and file bear the most pains. We are supposed to "innovate" as managers consistently demand of us while themselves mostly doing pointless meetings and power-pointing. Yet our accomplishment is mostly determined by how much direct business impact our work creates. With this conflicting goals, we are really caught between a rock and a hard place. Unless you are a super star that can really balance the two, most of us just submit to the fact that our management can at any time put all the blame on us one way or the other, with nothing sticking to them. In general, I had my good times here. But this is the sad time now. Stay away.
