There are three downsides that makes working for ims not attractive.
1 - The biggest downsize is the fact that effort, expertise and competency are not fairly rewarded. There is an unwritten rule embedded in the ims culture that no matter how much effort or responsibilites one has taken, if you have not been on a roll for the average time, it is virtually impossible to get a promotion. This can be very dissapointing as it does not reward true performance and incentise people to take it easy and ride with the wave.
2 - Bonuses are a myth. On the three years I have been with the company I have never received a full bonus, even when the company was making steady profits. E.g., on one of the years, although I reached the highest score on the performance review system, which in theory would have translated into 200% of the bonus baseline, I was told that because as a company we reached 98% of the target, I was only going to get 100% of the bonus. You can imagine what happened with bonuses during the economic downturn: The targets set by senior management are consistenly unrealistic. Even in the middle of the downturn, when all our clients were reporting decreased earnings or even losses, the overall target of the company was set for a double digit growth.
3 - Lack of support for developing people. Although there is an initiative called Bright Sparks, by which anyone can apply for and gain access to a pool of funds to be used for external courses, the whole European pool is for $50, 000 (to be shared by everyone in this region). There is a performance management system, however, in practice, "serving time" in a given position ranks equal with trying to outperform peers. This is a company that demands hard work but does not reward effort.
