IBM reviews

3.9

78% would recommend to a friend

(107,157 total reviews)
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Arvind Krishna

76% approve of CEO

68% positive business outlook

IBM has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 107,157 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The IBM employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

107K reviews
4.0
May 27, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Immense resources with some very talented people. There are tons of very interesting projects going on internally, many of which will eventually make it into products. In some respects, our intranet is a geek's dream playground.

Cons

Because it is such a large company, it is not the sort of place where you will move up through the ranks very quickly. Although it is not the IBM of the olden days, there is still very much a management hierarchy, and getting promoted to a people manager role takes time. My biggest complaint would be around the company's sales strategy. There is a laser-like focus on the IBM "message," and as a result individual brands are not permitted to do their own advertising. The end result is a company with a set of great products that not one in the marketplace is aware of. It is very frustrating to see this as a sales rep, where you are selling products you can get excited about, but feel like you are being slowed down by IBM's own sales strategy.

5.0
Jan 29, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

IBM is open and fair and pays well. I worked there for 9 years in Europe and they are extremely flexible to their employees, no managers breathe down your neck for petty things like vacation time, where you are working every day, free time, etc. They focus on where it matters - your job performance. Business goals are captured and measured twice a year in an online system. The collaboration between employees is exceptional because of the real-time collaboration tools. Most employees are able to manage their own time, work where and how they like, as long as of course they meet their business goals. The approach is fairly hands-off, which increases the self-imposed pressure to perform and meet your goals.

Cons

They are so big that sometimes you can get lost in the crowd. If you are like me you may want to move fast and find quick ways to close a complex global deal, for example, but you will have to work with many entrenched bureaucrats in their multiple fiefdoms to do anything in a non-standard creative way. Sometimes you have to deal with employees who realize that they can do the minimum effort, come to the office everyday, and basically rot away until they retire. Most of these fortunately are beginning to retire, but you still have some lifer-types who would need two months to work themselves out of a paper bag.

4.0
Apr 8, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Nice environment Great people Working from home

Cons

Not so much exciting like google or microsoft No so much innovation going on

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