A cutthroat culture of selfishness, tribalism, and self-promotion
Pros
Significant opportunity to work with new technologies to solve customer challenges.
Cons
Those who thrive are those who embrace the toxic, cutthroat culture of selfishness, tribalism, and self-promotion above all else and others. There is also significant overhead due to out of touch leaders who contribute very little, lack client intimacy, and see their role as redundant layers of supervision. While IBM takes steps to hire diverse talent, internal advancement suffers from a system that is very personality driven and influenced by strong in-group/out-group dynamics. IBM senior leadership tends to overlook bad behavior within certain verticals due to the perceived business case related to the individuals in question. Depending on business unit, leaders may not even hide favoritism and may openly demonstrate a lack of fairness in support and performance measurement. For certain minority demographics, as roles increase in seniority, expect to have one’s contributions routinely minimized or attributed to others, be held at arm’s length while peers are invited in with open arms, be required to have more demonstrated experience and eminence than peers to advance to the same levels, and face frequent microaggressions.
