IBM reviews

IBM's senior management and executive staff's focus on the so-called 2015 plan (US$20/EPS), and so-called shareholder value and the policies resulting from that reinforce the view within the engineering community of IBM's lack of care about its employees; 2012's change in (IBM US) 401K policy is merely the latest in a long line of insults to its employees; shareholders love IBM; almost no employee I speak with enjoys working at this company. What do we (rank-and-file) employees see? We see an executive staff that has increased their options and share ownership (reducing income tax bite) while non-executive staff have not seen the increases in pay (or other compensation) and an increasingly brutal culture that shows blatant disregard for these same employees while paying mere lip service to the idea of a positive culture.

There is tremendous pressure on sales team to meet quotas - so consulting engagements are always over sold and over promised. Once the contract is signed the sales team moves on to sell the next engagement. The sales teams incentives seem to be based on sales numbers and not on project delivery or profitablity. The delivery team instead is measured on client satisfaction and profitability, making it very challenging in all oversold assignments. This over promising of assignments together with a team that is mostly average or mediocre performers puts a lot of pressure on experienced hires to deliver - thus most client engagements end up being 60 to 80 hours a week including weekend work to meet the client expectations. The available technical talent at GBS is made up of a limited number of star performers and a large majority of average or mediocre performers. Most GBS projects have an abundance of contract employees from other staff augmentation firms. There is no control on the quality or delivery of these contract consultants. GBS Partners are ok with this arrangement as long as there is a mark up that is being made from the contract employees. A very small percentage of star performers stay back to attempt at promotions, a large majority just move on after getting burnt out in a couple of years.