Pros
- Traveling to different places - Meeting different kinds of clients and co-workers - Office space was nice - Many intelligent co-workers - If you can survive for two years, it is very easy to go to another firm
Cons
- Managers ask you to lie about your work hours, so you end up working 12-14 a day and don't get paid for it (against the supposed company policy, but that's IBM for you) - Incredibly sexist - Public consulting has better work hours, so commercial consulting is the worse off section to work in (see the first bullet) - You receive several managers above you, and no one really cares much where you are going, just if you are doing your job (you can't switch positions, you can't ask for training for your area of work, you can't receive support in harassment situations) - Do not work in DC if you are in commercial consulting - no one from that area comes to the office so networking is difficult - For some reason, the upper level of the office had a nice coffee maker, and the downstairs had terrible coffee which eventually was taken away altogether - pretty symbolic of how the upper level really doesn't care much for lower levels (and it was just bizarre not to have any access to coffee when that is essentially the first item companies have?). Hopefully, they fixed this by now. - Taking vacations will lower your utilization rate, so even if you have time to take off, don't if you're close to the borderline where you get fired - There were several phases of layoffs, particularly the newly hired, which was incredibly unlucky for those who didn't get a chance to have any project experience (I believe this got rectified because IBM over hired college students) - Getting fired was very easy; heard about co-workers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time with little to no heads up - Getting the right manager was uncommon as the good ones always left IBM quickly, so chances are you are going to get a manager that pushes you around, throws you under the bus, and asks you to work weekends/late nights with no heads up. If you get one of the good ones, they are fantastic. - There is definitely an IBM character: focused on work, no time for hobbies (unless it is exercise), comes off cold, enjoys networking, family comes second, enjoys talking about what status they have in each airline/hotel chain. If you fit that stereotype, then this is a great place for you - it just wasn't aligning with my values.
