Pros
No pros at all. Don’t join the company
Cons
I do not recommend working at Hakkoda/IBM: They walk all over their employees and rely purely on nepotism and friendships. The main head in Costa Rica, who doesn’t even know where he’s standing. Previously, everything was fully remote, and now just to keep him in position they made a hybrid model. He is a terrible leader and only his friends are the ones who move forward. There are some contracts that at the moment of the merger with IBM were created, according to him under the name of top performers, and it was not like that—it’s just people who are part of his network of friends. The site manager was the first person who should have been let go during the merge, especially since his name was stained when most of his “top performers,” or better said “top nepos,” were scammed by one of his employees and what the company did was wash their hands of it. The scam in total was more than $500k. If you want to work in a toxic environment, join Hakkoda/IBM. One person joins and five people leave. The former top executives are similar; they are people who don’t even have the knowledge to lead the company and they also brought their children into the company, who went from junior to senior in one year. For example, when they come to Costa Rica, they are paid a buffet, and for the rest who are not from the United States they are given a very bad pizza. It’s clear that Latin America represents the backyard to keep exploiting talent. For employees who are actually going the extra mile and are not friends of the site manager, there are no growth opportunities, and those who are the favorites in Costa Rica already have assigned positions and are kept there with contracts that year after year pay them to force them to stay. At the moment of the merge with IBM they forced everyone to resign to avoid paying labor liabilities, and if not, they would let you go. This company disrespected the law and allowed a scam to happen when one of their favorite employees started asking all employees for money and IBM never did anything about it. Think twice if you believe an opportunity at Hakkoda an IBM company is good when the perks are basic and the health insurance is one of the worst that exists. When they sold the company to IBM, they had already gone a long time without closing high-value deals, so there were no opportunities to learn new things. And it’s a company that doesn’t even know what Artificial Intelligence is, even though they are always selling that as the objective of the company. When they do end year reviews, there are no growth opportunities and nothing tangible where you can see how your goals are reflected after each of these evaluations. These are the main takeaways: Leadership lacks transparency and consistent direction Perceived favoritism impacts promotions and opportunities Limited career growth for employees outside leadership’s inner circle Poor handling of internal concerns reduces trust in management High turnover and low morale across teams Unclear performance review and promotion processes Inconsistent treatment of employees across regions
