Worst work experience ever - TA Coordinator IBM Employee Review

2.0
Aug 22, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Home office work possibility, nice newly built office in city center.

Cons

This company and the work environment took a 180 degree turn compared to when I applied over 2 years ago. It is visible and obvious based on the CEO’s 5 year plan that they want to reduce workforce in areas where AI can do the work, but instead of doing the common practice of collective redundancy, they rather provocateur employees to leave by their own will, hence they avoid paying a separation package. IBM has a horrible quality check practice where they rate their employees every 6 months or so based on unrealistic data pulled from incorrect reports. If this wouldn’t be enough, from now on they will be counting the mistakes each employee makes - these will be added to your half year rating. If you are not flexible enough according to them, or you express your OWN OPINION or your dislike, they will categorize you as a “low performer” - a label which you will carry along your entire IBM career! I’m also not sure how management is chosen as not all of them are as competent as they should be: zero leadership and people skills, unable to connect with their employees. Upper management is unapproachable as they prefer to stick their head in the sand when they hear issues being raised. Zero problem solving, even less caring. Last but not least, horribly low salary for the work performed, after digging some information it is way below average, but of course they expect you to take on new tasks even if it isn’t your job to do. Of course salary was not increased due to inflation. BAD, terrible work-life balance due to the lot of stress you take home with you inevitably! The better you work, the more they take advantage of you. Toxic culture, toxic management - absolutely would not recommend this workplace even to my worst enemy. Worst work experience I have ever had.

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5.0
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Pros

1. Company work culture 2. benefits 3. learning resources

Cons

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4.0
Aug 26, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Disclaimer: A lot of what I'm writing below of course depends on the work area and management chain. But I found this to be fairly pervasive policies in IBM in my 9+ years with the company. 1. IBM's policies and management are very flexible when it comes to working remotely or accommodating various life situations (sick days, doctor visits, etc.). Management is encouraged to measure an employee by their work and impact, and not by hours spent at their office. 2. Great colleagues! Though unfortunately, many have been leaving due to the instability of IBM's HW development business. 3. At least in my area, there's a high level of flexibility on which projects should I undertake based on my and my management assessment of business impact.

Cons

1. Unfortunately, IBM still uses the "normal distribution" rating system, where at the end of the year each employee is ranked as a top contributor (5%), above average contributor (15%), average contributor (~75%), and bottom contributor (5%). This curve is difficult to apply in the R&D world, where you may have many members of the team working long and hard hours, and end up being "average contributors" at the end of the year, because there just isn't room for all to be top contributors. 2. The above may not be so disturbing, if only IBM didn't practically cancelled all raises, performance bonuses and incentive for the non top-performers. I've had a consistent "above average" rating in the last 4-5 years, and my raise and performance bonus were ridiculous mere 1.5-2% of my salary. Were I rated "average contributor" I would have gotten NOTHING. So you can imagine that people can go year after year without any raise to their salary. From talking to manager friend, this is IBM's way to eliminate the non-top-performers without having to fire them, as part of its direction of reducing US manpower. 3. Hiring freeze in many areas - again, as part of IBM's attempt to reduce its workforce across North America and Europe we see many jobs move to the India and Far East markets. This is of course upsetting to see local teams shrink and disappear, especially when many great local IBM colleagues and experts begin to drop out. From my experience thus far working with India SW teams - they are still very far away from the standards I would have expected from US and Europe based teams. 4. Poor top down communication about company's and divisions' future. Employees learn from rumors and news websites what's about to come...

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IBM Response
10y
Thanks for sharing your experience, and we're glad that you've had a positive experience working with talented colleagues and taking advantage of IBM's programs. IBM is in the midst of a major transformation, --our Systems business is going through its own changes to strengthen competitiveness. Change is never easy. As part of our transformation, we just launched a whole new approach for how we are coaching employees, delivering feedback and managing reviews. No distribution guidelines or what some think of as 'stacked rankings." What's particularly great is that this was co-designed with our employee base from all over the world... to the tune of hundreds of thousands of page views, comments, on-line debates and discussions. IBMers even named the new system Checkpoint, to reflect the regular feedback rituals we're adopting. Managers are more empowered with the new methodology to help them acknowledge the great work of their teams and help their employees develop professionally. These steps and more are showing up in our employee surveys as well. So IBMers are feeling the change. We are confident these changes will help us in continuing to attract and retain great talent.
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