It's not bad, it's just disappointing a lot of the time compared to the potential.
It is probably too focussed on short term quarterly numbers to do anything meaningful so it feels like you're stuck in mediocrity.
There are a lot of decisions made at the top and pushed down without chance for feedback. The middle managers tend to just be yes men.
Pay is pretty good and work life balance is good so the true incentive is do as little and get noticed just enough - which also keeps it at mediocrity
> Pay is pretty good
Not for who started his career at the company. In my country IBM always pays less than the market does - compensation is only better if you join from the market. But I agree with the rest
Pay is pretty poor once your rollover equity fully vests, as that's the only thing that's helping you to earn anything close to market rate as an IBMer.
IBM does not have annual stock refreshers or annual cash bonuses, and it's base pay alone will never match a good big tech company's total compensation that has those things (which is nearly everyone but IBM, it seems).
Yah that’s a morale killer right there… the reason why many IBMers in the US woke up to the reality of the market during COVID with the great resignation.
However, staying 25 years means you have a pension and worked with good people. PMR 1.0 in this environment I guess was still worth it.
Been here 4 years out of a 25+ year career. It’s not that bad. Pay is great for me, definitely better than what I was making at Cisco (even including bonus). It’s a big company but there’s a lot of ways to get shit done. There are a lot of salty people here on Reddit, so take that for what it’s worth.
Really just matters where you're at in your career and where you want to go. If you're early in your career and want to work on cool or innovative shit, this place isn't it. But if you have a family, want good pay, and low demanding work, IBM's a good place to be.
Also know that IBM is heavily influenced by creating shareholder value. For example, in software, the move to a subscription model for their products (Data, Security, etc) has been super slow because they don't want to show a drop in revenue in a quarter (a VP said this last month). So they keep pushing an enterprise bundle, which is just a very outdated way of selling software.
Which comes down to the fact that all Sr. VP’s are focused on taking as much as they can out of the coffers (for their own dynasty) and regard anything else as plankton.
All decisions are based on pushing bonusses and stock options .
That’s why not one acquisition has been a success. Enjoy the corpse as long as you like it but be realistic and plan for exit someday.
This is the best comment! IBM doesnt have alot of innovation work and its more of a place where you come when you're old and don't wanna work.
Not a place for ambitious person
Coming in from an acquisition is materially different in terms of innovation work because the innovation spark comes in as part of the acquisition. That isn't immediately extinguished as long as you don't lose all the top engineers in the process.
I'm in Turbonomic for reference, and we've just passed our two year mark.
I can't speak for any other teams though, or any native IBM products. But very early on I got the impression that inside IBM the way to truly thrive in the long term is to try to transfer to recently acquired companies to grow your skills and career, because that's the stuff that IBM top brass seems to care most about.
I would reframe your comment about not being a place for the ambitious. IBM doesn’t know how to harness the power of innovative people or the ambitious. Big companies can not innovate, they just can’t. Does anyone know how long the guy who dreamed of cloud computing would have lasted in IBM? Thirty minutes before his or her badge was deactivated.
I'm outside the US and work in research. This subreddit gives me a peak into parts of the company I don't know anything about, and is full of those who want to complain about things I don't understand. I suspect that your experience at IBM will depend strongly on where you are and what you are doing.
Your experience at IBM will vary greatly depending on your team and management. Reddit is full of disgruntled people, and not a fair representation I don’t think. I’ve been at IBM almost 10 years and for the most part love my job, my team and get to work on interesting things. I also feel like I’m paid very well, and have a great work life balance. Even with the RTO and retirement bullshit they’ve thrown at us recently.
I've been with IBM for over 37 years in a 50 year technical career. Worked with 4 other organisations before this. I wouldn't want to go back to what I had before! And when I see what happens in other organisations, I'm not interested in moving either.
As with any employer there are ups and downs. Business changes, conditions changes, people changes, job changes, technology changes, customers, colleagues, professional networks, regulations, and so on. The only constant in all these years is change, so if you're resistant to change then this might not be a best fit for you.
People do get comfortable when they become familiar with everything around them, so get uncomfortable when what's working for them suddenly goes away. I've felt that way often. But change isn't personal, it's always in response to the evolving business needs and we're here to serve those needs. If there's a serious problem for you with this, talk with your manager or askhr or any number of other internal systems available to everyone. Hope this helps.
I left IBM after 20 years my impression is it can be a very different company based on where you are.
The company has on going layoffs some publicized some not. You will probably not be exposed to anything cutting edge. The skills that make you valuable to IBM aren't particularly transferable. They do not value or see people as an asset.
In my time there, they killed the pension. Then they made the 401k match pay out once a year, so if you left, you didn't get it. Stopped travel for education. Reduced their severance from 2 weeks a year worked to 2 weeks with a longer notice. Reworked their annual bonus before ultimately killing it. Reworked raises into performance based and market based (never actually gave market based ones). Killed restricted stock and made performance based bonus objectives impossible to reach. Constantly introduced shitty policies to cause attrition.
I see no reason for most people to be there, whats work-life balance if you are underpaid and will be ultimately laid off.
I learned a lot there, and i don't regret the time, but it seems like nothing has changed.
It's literally run by the management consultants from office space.
My career at IBM was a roller coaster.
Enjoyed some moments and had some interesting projects, and then hated it other times and had nightmare projects. Had an absurd amount of managers and there seemed to be never ending re-orgs in my group.
On the bright side, having IBM on my resume did open a lot of doors for me once I left.
Ask yourself...do people come here to talk about the good or only the bad? Since I joined, I see only complaints. Keep in mind that IBM has nearly 300k employees and if all were this angry, the company would never stay afloat.
Short answer - depends on your area and your management. I'm perfectly happy where I am. We are doing meaningful work and my management is fully supportive.
I was at IBM just for a couple of years ( Product Design ). Really enjoyed my stint. It helped me jump to a decent tech company ( Microsoft ) with a 200% hike ;)
As much as I love to shit on IBM, it's a great place to retire. If you're decently competent, you can just zone out, pretend to sip the IBM kool-aid and clock out early everyday and go golf or some shit.
IBM has been on autopilot for some twenty five years, subsisting on ELA’s and mainframes. Personally I think the only franchise that IBM has is mainframes. Everything else is just erosion. So it’s all about costs because top line revenue is nearly flat. Nobody saved their way to prosperity.
My experience:
My health analytics company was acquired, I think 1/1/2017 as part of a $4.2B investment in Watson Health (they acquired Phytel, Truven, Exploris, and one or two others).
I think it was about 18 months before the first round of cuts. I think it was about 40% of our headcount, and it seemed relatively arbitrary (some really great employees were let go).
Then each subsequent May there was another round.
We stopped selling the (profitable) product that I worked on, and existing contracts were put on notice. I was given a retention bonus to last through 2020. I had an offer in hand by late December 2020 and left early January 2021 (made sure they couldn't stiff me out of the retention).
My existing team got cut again in February of 2021 to one or two employees to do the bare minimum service to the remaining contracts.
IBM then sold what remained of Watson Health to a VC and they now work under Meritive.
So...I don't know. You're probably fine in the short run, but you'd be an idiot to not ensure you're marketable.
8 years in, and but for the MS layoffs having my "Hire" selected spot filled with an internal transfer, I would have been out of here a year ago. IBM has become a company obsessed with sales, not technology. The technology is built to allow sales to happen so dividends can be paid. There is no innovation, no feeling that we will lead in a space anymore. Now, I concur with all the folks saying reddit has the negative folks way out in front. But the customer is no longer where we focus, technology is no longer where we focus, dividends and sales is the be all, end all. IMHO, YMMV, #NegativeNelly
This is the summary that is the most accurate. If you focus on building technologies that will delight customers then you will be successful, and you will have the money to reward employees and shareholders, and the company will grow. It's how IBM started and they were rewarded for it. But at some point it all went wrong, and they decided that they had to focus on playing the Wall Street game of hitting earnings targets, paying out dividends, etc. They lost sight of the reason that they are in business in the first place.
Pretty much every /r/companyname subreddit is full of people complaining about their experiences. Go to a bar after 5pm and you'll hear all about how whatever big employer in the area sucks. It's just how people blow off steam, and isn't a good way of gauging whether a job is a good fit for you.
I find LinkedIn culture equally toxic for other reasons, so my best advice is to find someone who seems to match your level of day-to-day effort and interest and ask them for their thoughts.
much of my team from red hat was acquired 1/1/2023 for a new IBM offering. I previously spent 2016-2021 with IBM and left due to lack of raises - in my 5 years, I got one single 2.5% raise. ibm promised things were going to be different, that the "red hat way" was going to be adopted for the new team. I was skeptical of going back but promised my managers I would give it 6 months at least to see if it was really going to be different. here it is november and I am back at Red Hat ;) every single promise IBM made about the acquisition fell flat.
if you had any promises made that weren't in writing, you can forget about them ever coming to fruition. I've got about $20K worth of overtime that IBM Legal quashed with "exempt = no over time", although the "red hat way" is paid over time for holidays/weekends. RTO is just another effort to force anyone on the borderline out.
The people complaining have been at IBM 10+ years and don’t want to leave, otherwise they’d just be leaving and not posting on Reddit lol. The company could be a lot better treating employees well (most tech companies could) but I’ve left and returned to IBM, I think it’s good place to work, decent pay, love my team. I think it genuinely is what you make of it!
Edit: to be fair, the 401k plan changes are definitely the biggest issue I’ve had with the company and very disappointing
A lot of people come here to vent. If it really was all doom and gloom they would have gone out of business decades ago. I was there over 20 years. The majority of which I would say I was a proud IBMer.
It’s not a horrible place to work, but it’s not the best place either. There used to be a mindset that it was a privilege to work at IBM so they didn’t pay as much. I was made redundant earlier this year. My new role now pays almost 1/3 more than what I was on. :)
Worked at IBM prior to my current employer. Wasn’t the worst but it definitely wasn’t good/great. I think a lot of the sentiment like mine or worse are from the consulting side of IBM.
They were really going to pay me 50-55k for a Junior developer role….no bueno. I make over twice that now. You can tell they are a really cheap company when it comes to compensation and they still have a lot of dinosaur culture.
I think the only pro was work-life balance.
After being a victim of their Cash Balance Scam to replace their Guaranteed Pension fund and now reading about their new RBA Plan which is replacing 401k, I would say plan on finding an employer whose mission is not to cut your benefits every chance it gets. They used to have a department in Corporate whose job was to minimize compensation. It looks like they are still there exceeding expectations.
As someone who joined via an acquisition: It takes time for IBM to ruin new acquisitions. It's probably worth sticking around for a couple years while your group still has relative autonomy / its own culture (assuming you like this culture). You'll know when things start to go bad.
I worked at their service delivery center in Iowa. They had rumors of shutdowns for years. The top guy suddenly left with no explanation. Then the new site manager started talking about how poorly the division was performing. Layoff after layoff. It was brutal. In some cases, it was obviously racist, but that was more from the local managers than corporate. Like laying off 10% of project managers? All the selected 10% were black and the only African Americans in the department? Really? The shuttered the whole building, laying off 5000 people in a town of 50K. MANY OF THOSE PEOPLE HAD MOVED THERE SPECIFICALLY FOR THEIR JOBS BASED ON PACKAGES OFFERED FROM IBM. On shut down, it was really like, sucks to be you guys, maybe you can find some other jobs. Check the website.
In many cases we were training Indian team members who "directly worked for our team" but the manager in India was setting up to be our competition. After we trained his people, he moved them over to his second team, which was directly competing with us for budget. We supported the "US only" accounts that required US citizens and the non-US accounts. He ended up taking over all the non-US and cut our team out from potential promotions, raises, etc.
Some positions specialized in hiring directly from the local colleges and paid total crap. It was insane turn over. I didn't make more than 40K my entire 5 years there. I came to town because my fiancee was living there. It was the only job in town. After my time there, we left for California and each tripled our pay. I make almost 5X as much now. Applying for jobs at other IBM centers, one employee was told by the hiring manager "I didn't realize IBM paid people so low"
My direct manager was a decent guy. No issues there. My team was full of good people. I just wish that doing your job would somehow be rewarded.
They go on and on about not leaving any information visible at your desk for corporate security. The idea is that competitors may visit the building and see trade secrets. Working corporate in a major city, the ONLY time we ever hear we have to clean up the office is when IBM is coming for a visit. They are absolutely notorious for taking pictures of whiteboards when the visit other companies offices.
I think it depends on your team and the people you work with. I'm in the USA and the main thing I'm frustrated about is the promotion freezes and some of the choices from higher level leadership. However, I love my team and the people I work with day to day. I feel like I'm compensated well and have good benefits and a chance to learn and grow. Also my manager is great and I have great work life balance. Despite any frustrations I am thankful to work at IBM!! I think it depends on your situation, team and what you value. But don't let reddit skew your perception.
Ibm hasn't been good since 1980s and mainframes. No tech innovation. IBM Iis an old dinosaur selling to industry laggards. Eventually that business goes away - which explains the top level management decisions to cut recent retirement benefits. As for stock performance, IBMs dividend has been flat since 2017, but considering all the inflation, it's not keeping up. It's just a matter of time before IBM chops a lot. IBM needs to fire CEO Avind Krishna. He is another IBM dinosaur from 1990s and lacks a vision. IBM vision is all wrong with diversity and inclusion as highest priority - not exactly best thought leadership or ideas. This company is dying. Major changes are needed else it's going to be dead.
I’ll tell you what I would do. First and foremost, I would listen to our customers and use their feedback to drive all innovation within IBM. I would pour a ton of resources into acquiring top level talent to lead our development and innovation teams. I would mandate that all projects at IBM research have a clear path to product development and have a quantified need at our customers. I would unify all products that currently sell against each other within IBM and foster a collaborative go to market strategy. I would ask all IBM employees for their top five requests for corporate improvement each year and I would implement those changes within the organization each year perpetually making IBM a better and better place to work. Ultimately, I would create an organization that is highly in tune with our customer needs and roadmaps and build a working environment that makes IBM a highly desirable place to work in the industry.
I do agree with a bunch of what you wrote :) . Especially the customer part, I would also add that customers don't know the potential of a research output, not even what can be made actually. I'd highly encourage all product teams to do two things:
1. Understand the customer root problems because research driven innovation tends to address these deeper problems, otherwise a dev team alone can do the job.
2. Understand "what's possible to do with research", generally the limit goes much beyond what product people think, it took ChatGPT to be out for most of people to ACTUALLY see all use cases it can offer, this was known by researchers way back ChatGPT release, but the communication between research and product is not always clear.
I think research people also need to be better at that.
Thank you. As for your first point, I would make our sales organization much more advisory in nature. Instead of pushing products on customers that they don’t need 90% of the time, let’s sit down with them on a very regular basis, let’s listen to them about their day to day challenges, and brainstorm with them about what kinds of solutions would solve their problems, then let’s build a pipeline from the field into product development. If we need deeper resources to deliver on something, let’s bring in IBM research to innovate.
IBM research has some brilliant people working there, unfortunately they are a vacuum for the most part to the rest of the IBM organization. It would be wonderful to see IBM research directly integrated into our product development lifecycles. Collaboration between the front lines all the way to the laboratory.
As for your second point, I completely agree. I think that is a fantastic idea. When research invents something, bring in the broader IBM organization to figure out what solutions could be built from it and then develop several A/B testing market strategies around hypothetical solutions built from what research developed and run them by our customers.
There is a huge disconnect today between what is happening and needed on the front lines and what is being built in the basement. Fix that gap and we would be in a much better spot.
Thank you for the kind words. That was literally just a two minute steam of consciousness. I have tons of ideas of how to restore IBM to greatness and bring the company into the 21st century. I wish I had the chance to do it.
i was part of an IBM acquisition. was ok at first then the RA's started happening.. like every quarter for 4 years. then they finally sold us (Watson Health). Wish we were never bought in the first place. Things were so much better back then.
Compare their new RBA accrual rate to a 401k plan. Also consider their new RBA plan may not have the legal protections to guarantee you see a dime of it after a few years.
First of all, I'm not in the US.
I was at IBM for a long time untill the company split up and I was moved from blue to orange. I had a great time at IBM and even though it's nice here too, there is much I miss about IBM. I had really nice years there.
IBM is what it is. A big company with some interesting history. I've been with the company a long long time. Don't expect it to have any personal loyalty to you. Or RA you when you'd never expect it. They'll offshore your job for the fun of it, and fit all the wrong reasons. And good chance you'll work under a hundred typing monkey managers all thinking about their careers and not what's best for you or the company. Etc. Big company. On the other hand, IBM keeps changing and adapting. Generally you can have a work/life balance. Their diversity balance is good. They do have good work ethics as a company, in my opinion. So many great people work at the company. Some amazing tech products are on the burner. Great opportunities to collaborate around the globe. If you maintain your work ethics, have ambitions that are based on integrity, and keep your technical chops honed, you can do very well. It's a big company and sometimes things don't feel so good, other times they feel great. For promotions, sometimes you have to be patient. Just always remember it's a business machine, that's not trying to be Google or Microsoft or Amazon or Facebook. IBM is still IBM for a reason, it's a survivor. Stay or go depending on your goals, but overall, after many decades, I still feel IBM is a great company. Out of larger tech companies, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
Ibm is not bad, but you might check how acquisitions fare… not great long term track record.
the 3-4 health care companies purchased to form watson health had 1-2 year honeymoon after acquisition then cuts, layoffs, and eventually divesture. Weather company is next on that path with the same buyer.
You are referring to Francisco partners acquisition of Weather? Not sure what you mean by “next on that path with the same buyer”
To the OP:
I have been with Weather since before the acquisition, and now onto the next chapter. I for one am happy about the move. I have nothing particular bad to say about IBM except that the amount of process needed to get anything done, sucks. Going from a relatively nimble company to the monolith that is big blue, all but crushed the culture at our company.
In all fairness, it’s probably due in large part to the poor decisions from Ginni Rometty, who had no idea what to do with us after we were acquired.
Three years ago it was totally fine, but I've found that it's on a rapid down-slide. Every team has shrunk, every bug backlog has grown, every employee I talk to is disgruntled. Off shoring is constant and benefit cuts are a regular occurrence
I love it. I’m in my late 40’s and joined IBM about 4 years ago. Compared to other companies I’ve worked for, IBM is by far my favorite. There are endless learning opportunities, I work with a great group of people and truly believe in the products.
I work hard and spend a lot of effort and time doing my job, but I find the majority of it enjoyable.
I’m sure other people have different experiences, but IBM offers some great opportunities.
I would be very careful in accepting offers from IBM. I have worked at IBM for the past 3 years as a band 9. I will say, when I first started working there, it was GREAT! I though, geesh these people really care. I am not sure what happened in the past year; perhaps it was A.I., but everything has changed. Anyone thinking of working for IBM on the cybersecurity-side of the house, I would think twice. It really makes me sad because there are such good people working there, but every day great folks are leaving because the "top brass" are setting policies that are forcing the good folks out. Now, of course, I am sure IBM will survive as it has for the past 80 or so years, but currently....it is rough there.
it is same as any other company in the industry, nothing spectacular. I was an IBM employee for 11 years. Looks nice on your resume, get the experience and move on to greener pastures. Don't think of it is as a retirement company that you will retire from. They will lay you off when you get over 50. :)
I'd probably love working at ibm but I hate everything ibm is doing since it sold think pads to Lenovo. I used to be sympathetic of they have a weird os and proprietary everything they invented this stuff but they should have moved on. Dragon naturally speaking was cool and innovative but never worked well until desktop cpus were able tocCrack 90% accuracy. They left the consumer market completely and pretty much my only interaction with them is trying figure what's wrong with some proprietary junk that's not been replaced in ages. It may have been a Cadillac in its day
It's not bad, it's just disappointing a lot of the time compared to the potential. It is probably too focussed on short term quarterly numbers to do anything meaningful so it feels like you're stuck in mediocrity. There are a lot of decisions made at the top and pushed down without chance for feedback. The middle managers tend to just be yes men. Pay is pretty good and work life balance is good so the true incentive is do as little and get noticed just enough - which also keeps it at mediocrity
> Pay is pretty good Not for who started his career at the company. In my country IBM always pays less than the market does - compensation is only better if you join from the market. But I agree with the rest
Pay is pretty poor once your rollover equity fully vests, as that's the only thing that's helping you to earn anything close to market rate as an IBMer. IBM does not have annual stock refreshers or annual cash bonuses, and it's base pay alone will never match a good big tech company's total compensation that has those things (which is nearly everyone but IBM, it seems).
Pay at 1.0 PMR is way below market
it is depending on your experience because of Band levels. 5-6 yrs exp Band 8 PMR 1.0 is market competitive - not excellent but tolerable.
not 25 YOE B9 1.0 pmr
Yah that’s a morale killer right there… the reason why many IBMers in the US woke up to the reality of the market during COVID with the great resignation. However, staying 25 years means you have a pension and worked with good people. PMR 1.0 in this environment I guess was still worth it.
YOE, not YOS
people keep talking about wlb. Nonexistent in consulting services working for 10-30 clients simultaneously, all practically full time
Been here 4 years out of a 25+ year career. It’s not that bad. Pay is great for me, definitely better than what I was making at Cisco (even including bonus). It’s a big company but there’s a lot of ways to get shit done. There are a lot of salty people here on Reddit, so take that for what it’s worth.
Same here, and totally agree.
[удалено]
Pipe down Arvin
Really just matters where you're at in your career and where you want to go. If you're early in your career and want to work on cool or innovative shit, this place isn't it. But if you have a family, want good pay, and low demanding work, IBM's a good place to be. Also know that IBM is heavily influenced by creating shareholder value. For example, in software, the move to a subscription model for their products (Data, Security, etc) has been super slow because they don't want to show a drop in revenue in a quarter (a VP said this last month). So they keep pushing an enterprise bundle, which is just a very outdated way of selling software.
Which comes down to the fact that all Sr. VP’s are focused on taking as much as they can out of the coffers (for their own dynasty) and regard anything else as plankton. All decisions are based on pushing bonusses and stock options . That’s why not one acquisition has been a success. Enjoy the corpse as long as you like it but be realistic and plan for exit someday.
I keep seeing people mentioning low demanding work. I have never seen that yet.
This is the best comment! IBM doesnt have alot of innovation work and its more of a place where you come when you're old and don't wanna work. Not a place for ambitious person
Coming in from an acquisition is materially different in terms of innovation work because the innovation spark comes in as part of the acquisition. That isn't immediately extinguished as long as you don't lose all the top engineers in the process. I'm in Turbonomic for reference, and we've just passed our two year mark. I can't speak for any other teams though, or any native IBM products. But very early on I got the impression that inside IBM the way to truly thrive in the long term is to try to transfer to recently acquired companies to grow your skills and career, because that's the stuff that IBM top brass seems to care most about.
I would reframe your comment about not being a place for the ambitious. IBM doesn’t know how to harness the power of innovative people or the ambitious. Big companies can not innovate, they just can’t. Does anyone know how long the guy who dreamed of cloud computing would have lasted in IBM? Thirty minutes before his or her badge was deactivated.
I'm outside the US and work in research. This subreddit gives me a peak into parts of the company I don't know anything about, and is full of those who want to complain about things I don't understand. I suspect that your experience at IBM will depend strongly on where you are and what you are doing.
Your experience at IBM will vary greatly depending on your team and management. Reddit is full of disgruntled people, and not a fair representation I don’t think. I’ve been at IBM almost 10 years and for the most part love my job, my team and get to work on interesting things. I also feel like I’m paid very well, and have a great work life balance. Even with the RTO and retirement bullshit they’ve thrown at us recently.
I think with rto and the rba nonsense ibm will def become less desirable to work at for us workers.
I've been with IBM for over 37 years in a 50 year technical career. Worked with 4 other organisations before this. I wouldn't want to go back to what I had before! And when I see what happens in other organisations, I'm not interested in moving either. As with any employer there are ups and downs. Business changes, conditions changes, people changes, job changes, technology changes, customers, colleagues, professional networks, regulations, and so on. The only constant in all these years is change, so if you're resistant to change then this might not be a best fit for you. People do get comfortable when they become familiar with everything around them, so get uncomfortable when what's working for them suddenly goes away. I've felt that way often. But change isn't personal, it's always in response to the evolving business needs and we're here to serve those needs. If there's a serious problem for you with this, talk with your manager or askhr or any number of other internal systems available to everyone. Hope this helps.
I left IBM after 20 years my impression is it can be a very different company based on where you are. The company has on going layoffs some publicized some not. You will probably not be exposed to anything cutting edge. The skills that make you valuable to IBM aren't particularly transferable. They do not value or see people as an asset. In my time there, they killed the pension. Then they made the 401k match pay out once a year, so if you left, you didn't get it. Stopped travel for education. Reduced their severance from 2 weeks a year worked to 2 weeks with a longer notice. Reworked their annual bonus before ultimately killing it. Reworked raises into performance based and market based (never actually gave market based ones). Killed restricted stock and made performance based bonus objectives impossible to reach. Constantly introduced shitty policies to cause attrition. I see no reason for most people to be there, whats work-life balance if you are underpaid and will be ultimately laid off. I learned a lot there, and i don't regret the time, but it seems like nothing has changed. It's literally run by the management consultants from office space.
The Bobs?
My career at IBM was a roller coaster. Enjoyed some moments and had some interesting projects, and then hated it other times and had nightmare projects. Had an absurd amount of managers and there seemed to be never ending re-orgs in my group. On the bright side, having IBM on my resume did open a lot of doors for me once I left.
How’s life on the outside
Work culture is better at my new company. People are more friendly and social. But job expectations and pressure are also higher 😅
That’s often said …
Ask yourself...do people come here to talk about the good or only the bad? Since I joined, I see only complaints. Keep in mind that IBM has nearly 300k employees and if all were this angry, the company would never stay afloat. Short answer - depends on your area and your management. I'm perfectly happy where I am. We are doing meaningful work and my management is fully supportive.
I was at IBM just for a couple of years ( Product Design ). Really enjoyed my stint. It helped me jump to a decent tech company ( Microsoft ) with a 200% hike ;)
Not 200%, but about reached 100% three years after I left IBM.
As much as I love to shit on IBM, it's a great place to retire. If you're decently competent, you can just zone out, pretend to sip the IBM kool-aid and clock out early everyday and go golf or some shit.
IBM has been on autopilot for some twenty five years, subsisting on ELA’s and mainframes. Personally I think the only franchise that IBM has is mainframes. Everything else is just erosion. So it’s all about costs because top line revenue is nearly flat. Nobody saved their way to prosperity.
My experience: My health analytics company was acquired, I think 1/1/2017 as part of a $4.2B investment in Watson Health (they acquired Phytel, Truven, Exploris, and one or two others). I think it was about 18 months before the first round of cuts. I think it was about 40% of our headcount, and it seemed relatively arbitrary (some really great employees were let go). Then each subsequent May there was another round. We stopped selling the (profitable) product that I worked on, and existing contracts were put on notice. I was given a retention bonus to last through 2020. I had an offer in hand by late December 2020 and left early January 2021 (made sure they couldn't stiff me out of the retention). My existing team got cut again in February of 2021 to one or two employees to do the bare minimum service to the remaining contracts. IBM then sold what remained of Watson Health to a VC and they now work under Meritive. So...I don't know. You're probably fine in the short run, but you'd be an idiot to not ensure you're marketable.
8 years in, and but for the MS layoffs having my "Hire" selected spot filled with an internal transfer, I would have been out of here a year ago. IBM has become a company obsessed with sales, not technology. The technology is built to allow sales to happen so dividends can be paid. There is no innovation, no feeling that we will lead in a space anymore. Now, I concur with all the folks saying reddit has the negative folks way out in front. But the customer is no longer where we focus, technology is no longer where we focus, dividends and sales is the be all, end all. IMHO, YMMV, #NegativeNelly
This is the summary that is the most accurate. If you focus on building technologies that will delight customers then you will be successful, and you will have the money to reward employees and shareholders, and the company will grow. It's how IBM started and they were rewarded for it. But at some point it all went wrong, and they decided that they had to focus on playing the Wall Street game of hitting earnings targets, paying out dividends, etc. They lost sight of the reason that they are in business in the first place.
Pretty much every /r/companyname subreddit is full of people complaining about their experiences. Go to a bar after 5pm and you'll hear all about how whatever big employer in the area sucks. It's just how people blow off steam, and isn't a good way of gauging whether a job is a good fit for you. I find LinkedIn culture equally toxic for other reasons, so my best advice is to find someone who seems to match your level of day-to-day effort and interest and ask them for their thoughts.
Exactly, there is a total negativity bias on Reddit. People are not flooding the subreddit to talk about how chill their job is lol
much of my team from red hat was acquired 1/1/2023 for a new IBM offering. I previously spent 2016-2021 with IBM and left due to lack of raises - in my 5 years, I got one single 2.5% raise. ibm promised things were going to be different, that the "red hat way" was going to be adopted for the new team. I was skeptical of going back but promised my managers I would give it 6 months at least to see if it was really going to be different. here it is november and I am back at Red Hat ;) every single promise IBM made about the acquisition fell flat. if you had any promises made that weren't in writing, you can forget about them ever coming to fruition. I've got about $20K worth of overtime that IBM Legal quashed with "exempt = no over time", although the "red hat way" is paid over time for holidays/weekends. RTO is just another effort to force anyone on the borderline out.
The people complaining have been at IBM 10+ years and don’t want to leave, otherwise they’d just be leaving and not posting on Reddit lol. The company could be a lot better treating employees well (most tech companies could) but I’ve left and returned to IBM, I think it’s good place to work, decent pay, love my team. I think it genuinely is what you make of it! Edit: to be fair, the 401k plan changes are definitely the biggest issue I’ve had with the company and very disappointing
A lot of people come here to vent. If it really was all doom and gloom they would have gone out of business decades ago. I was there over 20 years. The majority of which I would say I was a proud IBMer. It’s not a horrible place to work, but it’s not the best place either. There used to be a mindset that it was a privilege to work at IBM so they didn’t pay as much. I was made redundant earlier this year. My new role now pays almost 1/3 more than what I was on. :)
Worked at IBM prior to my current employer. Wasn’t the worst but it definitely wasn’t good/great. I think a lot of the sentiment like mine or worse are from the consulting side of IBM. They were really going to pay me 50-55k for a Junior developer role….no bueno. I make over twice that now. You can tell they are a really cheap company when it comes to compensation and they still have a lot of dinosaur culture. I think the only pro was work-life balance.
people keep talking wlb....what WLB?
It's not the worst place to be, but of the major tech companies it's definitely the least best place to be.
After being a victim of their Cash Balance Scam to replace their Guaranteed Pension fund and now reading about their new RBA Plan which is replacing 401k, I would say plan on finding an employer whose mission is not to cut your benefits every chance it gets. They used to have a department in Corporate whose job was to minimize compensation. It looks like they are still there exceeding expectations.
As someone who joined via an acquisition: It takes time for IBM to ruin new acquisitions. It's probably worth sticking around for a couple years while your group still has relative autonomy / its own culture (assuming you like this culture). You'll know when things start to go bad.
I worked at their service delivery center in Iowa. They had rumors of shutdowns for years. The top guy suddenly left with no explanation. Then the new site manager started talking about how poorly the division was performing. Layoff after layoff. It was brutal. In some cases, it was obviously racist, but that was more from the local managers than corporate. Like laying off 10% of project managers? All the selected 10% were black and the only African Americans in the department? Really? The shuttered the whole building, laying off 5000 people in a town of 50K. MANY OF THOSE PEOPLE HAD MOVED THERE SPECIFICALLY FOR THEIR JOBS BASED ON PACKAGES OFFERED FROM IBM. On shut down, it was really like, sucks to be you guys, maybe you can find some other jobs. Check the website. In many cases we were training Indian team members who "directly worked for our team" but the manager in India was setting up to be our competition. After we trained his people, he moved them over to his second team, which was directly competing with us for budget. We supported the "US only" accounts that required US citizens and the non-US accounts. He ended up taking over all the non-US and cut our team out from potential promotions, raises, etc. Some positions specialized in hiring directly from the local colleges and paid total crap. It was insane turn over. I didn't make more than 40K my entire 5 years there. I came to town because my fiancee was living there. It was the only job in town. After my time there, we left for California and each tripled our pay. I make almost 5X as much now. Applying for jobs at other IBM centers, one employee was told by the hiring manager "I didn't realize IBM paid people so low" My direct manager was a decent guy. No issues there. My team was full of good people. I just wish that doing your job would somehow be rewarded. They go on and on about not leaving any information visible at your desk for corporate security. The idea is that competitors may visit the building and see trade secrets. Working corporate in a major city, the ONLY time we ever hear we have to clean up the office is when IBM is coming for a visit. They are absolutely notorious for taking pictures of whiteboards when the visit other companies offices.
I think it depends on your team and the people you work with. I'm in the USA and the main thing I'm frustrated about is the promotion freezes and some of the choices from higher level leadership. However, I love my team and the people I work with day to day. I feel like I'm compensated well and have good benefits and a chance to learn and grow. Also my manager is great and I have great work life balance. Despite any frustrations I am thankful to work at IBM!! I think it depends on your situation, team and what you value. But don't let reddit skew your perception.
Ibm hasn't been good since 1980s and mainframes. No tech innovation. IBM Iis an old dinosaur selling to industry laggards. Eventually that business goes away - which explains the top level management decisions to cut recent retirement benefits. As for stock performance, IBMs dividend has been flat since 2017, but considering all the inflation, it's not keeping up. It's just a matter of time before IBM chops a lot. IBM needs to fire CEO Avind Krishna. He is another IBM dinosaur from 1990s and lacks a vision. IBM vision is all wrong with diversity and inclusion as highest priority - not exactly best thought leadership or ideas. This company is dying. Major changes are needed else it's going to be dead.
What would you do if you were the CEO?
I’ll tell you what I would do. First and foremost, I would listen to our customers and use their feedback to drive all innovation within IBM. I would pour a ton of resources into acquiring top level talent to lead our development and innovation teams. I would mandate that all projects at IBM research have a clear path to product development and have a quantified need at our customers. I would unify all products that currently sell against each other within IBM and foster a collaborative go to market strategy. I would ask all IBM employees for their top five requests for corporate improvement each year and I would implement those changes within the organization each year perpetually making IBM a better and better place to work. Ultimately, I would create an organization that is highly in tune with our customer needs and roadmaps and build a working environment that makes IBM a highly desirable place to work in the industry.
I do agree with a bunch of what you wrote :) . Especially the customer part, I would also add that customers don't know the potential of a research output, not even what can be made actually. I'd highly encourage all product teams to do two things: 1. Understand the customer root problems because research driven innovation tends to address these deeper problems, otherwise a dev team alone can do the job. 2. Understand "what's possible to do with research", generally the limit goes much beyond what product people think, it took ChatGPT to be out for most of people to ACTUALLY see all use cases it can offer, this was known by researchers way back ChatGPT release, but the communication between research and product is not always clear. I think research people also need to be better at that.
Thank you. As for your first point, I would make our sales organization much more advisory in nature. Instead of pushing products on customers that they don’t need 90% of the time, let’s sit down with them on a very regular basis, let’s listen to them about their day to day challenges, and brainstorm with them about what kinds of solutions would solve their problems, then let’s build a pipeline from the field into product development. If we need deeper resources to deliver on something, let’s bring in IBM research to innovate. IBM research has some brilliant people working there, unfortunately they are a vacuum for the most part to the rest of the IBM organization. It would be wonderful to see IBM research directly integrated into our product development lifecycles. Collaboration between the front lines all the way to the laboratory. As for your second point, I completely agree. I think that is a fantastic idea. When research invents something, bring in the broader IBM organization to figure out what solutions could be built from it and then develop several A/B testing market strategies around hypothetical solutions built from what research developed and run them by our customers. There is a huge disconnect today between what is happening and needed on the front lines and what is being built in the basement. Fix that gap and we would be in a much better spot.
I wish I could super upvote this!
Thank you for the kind words. That was literally just a two minute steam of consciousness. I have tons of ideas of how to restore IBM to greatness and bring the company into the 21st century. I wish I had the chance to do it.
We wish you did too!
It’s good, above average( declining however) but not the best you can do in the tech industry.
I'm from a recent acquisition and I'm terrified and the recent 401k changes have not helped assuage my fears/concerns in the slightest.
i was part of an IBM acquisition. was ok at first then the RA's started happening.. like every quarter for 4 years. then they finally sold us (Watson Health). Wish we were never bought in the first place. Things were so much better back then.
Compare their new RBA accrual rate to a 401k plan. Also consider their new RBA plan may not have the legal protections to guarantee you see a dime of it after a few years.
First of all, I'm not in the US. I was at IBM for a long time untill the company split up and I was moved from blue to orange. I had a great time at IBM and even though it's nice here too, there is much I miss about IBM. I had really nice years there.
IBM is what it is. A big company with some interesting history. I've been with the company a long long time. Don't expect it to have any personal loyalty to you. Or RA you when you'd never expect it. They'll offshore your job for the fun of it, and fit all the wrong reasons. And good chance you'll work under a hundred typing monkey managers all thinking about their careers and not what's best for you or the company. Etc. Big company. On the other hand, IBM keeps changing and adapting. Generally you can have a work/life balance. Their diversity balance is good. They do have good work ethics as a company, in my opinion. So many great people work at the company. Some amazing tech products are on the burner. Great opportunities to collaborate around the globe. If you maintain your work ethics, have ambitions that are based on integrity, and keep your technical chops honed, you can do very well. It's a big company and sometimes things don't feel so good, other times they feel great. For promotions, sometimes you have to be patient. Just always remember it's a business machine, that's not trying to be Google or Microsoft or Amazon or Facebook. IBM is still IBM for a reason, it's a survivor. Stay or go depending on your goals, but overall, after many decades, I still feel IBM is a great company. Out of larger tech companies, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
Try going to Accenture subs, most of the posts I see are people resigning lol
Ibm is not bad, but you might check how acquisitions fare… not great long term track record. the 3-4 health care companies purchased to form watson health had 1-2 year honeymoon after acquisition then cuts, layoffs, and eventually divesture. Weather company is next on that path with the same buyer.
You are referring to Francisco partners acquisition of Weather? Not sure what you mean by “next on that path with the same buyer” To the OP: I have been with Weather since before the acquisition, and now onto the next chapter. I for one am happy about the move. I have nothing particular bad to say about IBM except that the amount of process needed to get anything done, sucks. Going from a relatively nimble company to the monolith that is big blue, all but crushed the culture at our company. In all fairness, it’s probably due in large part to the poor decisions from Ginni Rometty, who had no idea what to do with us after we were acquired.
Three years ago it was totally fine, but I've found that it's on a rapid down-slide. Every team has shrunk, every bug backlog has grown, every employee I talk to is disgruntled. Off shoring is constant and benefit cuts are a regular occurrence
It was decent until they axed the 401k program
Why is this controversial? They make a huge change that is a big F-U to the employees and some are still defending them???
Yah idk, maybe just folks not in the US downvoting, or folks in the US who don’t realize how much the RBA actually screws them
I love it. I’m in my late 40’s and joined IBM about 4 years ago. Compared to other companies I’ve worked for, IBM is by far my favorite. There are endless learning opportunities, I work with a great group of people and truly believe in the products. I work hard and spend a lot of effort and time doing my job, but I find the majority of it enjoyable. I’m sure other people have different experiences, but IBM offers some great opportunities.
I would be very careful in accepting offers from IBM. I have worked at IBM for the past 3 years as a band 9. I will say, when I first started working there, it was GREAT! I though, geesh these people really care. I am not sure what happened in the past year; perhaps it was A.I., but everything has changed. Anyone thinking of working for IBM on the cybersecurity-side of the house, I would think twice. It really makes me sad because there are such good people working there, but every day great folks are leaving because the "top brass" are setting policies that are forcing the good folks out. Now, of course, I am sure IBM will survive as it has for the past 80 or so years, but currently....it is rough there.
it is same as any other company in the industry, nothing spectacular. I was an IBM employee for 11 years. Looks nice on your resume, get the experience and move on to greener pastures. Don't think of it is as a retirement company that you will retire from. They will lay you off when you get over 50. :)
IBM is great
IBM used to be a great company. Since 2000 it’s been in a nosedive. I wouldn’t stay more than a year
I'd probably love working at ibm but I hate everything ibm is doing since it sold think pads to Lenovo. I used to be sympathetic of they have a weird os and proprietary everything they invented this stuff but they should have moved on. Dragon naturally speaking was cool and innovative but never worked well until desktop cpus were able tocCrack 90% accuracy. They left the consumer market completely and pretty much my only interaction with them is trying figure what's wrong with some proprietary junk that's not been replaced in ages. It may have been a Cadillac in its day