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IBM Employee Reviews in Chicago, IL
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Working at a customer location and interfacing with customer director on a day to day basis where the work culture is; "always in an escalation mode". Constantly changing priorities and a high demand often causes stressful work environment.
Despite of such an environment I was successful in winning trust and respect from the customer director who has partnered up for our mutual successes. The customer rating of 6.4 before IBM hired me improved to 7.5 within first 30 days to all the way to 9.5 in first 90 days.
I have accomplished so much in last six months here that gives me satisfactions and enjoyment.
Pros
Through relationship building I won trust and respect from customer
Cons
Constantly changing priorities
IBM doesn't care about the average employee. They care about the board and the executives. With the elimination of resources every 6-12 months there is no job security or culture of security.Low level management has virtually no authority, everything is driven from the very top.
Pros
Benefits
Cons
Management and company direction or lack thereof
Pay was not great, promotion process is too cumbersome. Good thing is their flexible work unless you are at a client site. Salary revision and bonus are below par.
Pros
Work life, benefits
Cons
Pay
There is not training for your current job, they just cut off you and hire a new people when they want. The organization is ridiculous and since they keep doing the reorganization, you are hard to find the correct resource and talent people to do the right thing.
I will say they are excellent at hiring people, but they elevate people to upper management who are not knowledgeable enough and ready to manage people. My guess is the compensation is what drives people to be managers, but the company should put more emphasis on readiness. Work/Life balance is a real plus, hard to find in other companies which is why I suspect so many stay there for decades. There are certainly worse places to work.
IBM has seen a major change in recent years. They have multiple layoffs each year, most of them in the US. Long hours are required, with high stress and little recognition from management.
I classic example of how they treat their employees is when you are laid off, you must work 90 days to train your replacement, and at the end they give you 30 days severance, no matter if you've worked there 3 years or 30 years.
IBM is a fantastic company that cares about it's employees, provides significant enablement and pays at or above market. I would recommend IBM to anyone considering a career in software industry. My only caution is that don;'t expect IBM to innovate as fast as any of the silicon valley startups. That can be frustrating at times.
Company is so disjointed...no sense of direction. Work exclusively remotely, which on its face may seem like a great opportunity good thing, but that basically enforces the isolation. they throw you in the deep end with no real training. Plus they've started off shoring a lot of the functions which really increases the uneasiness.
IBM provided me with the experience of working with a global work force.
Having interactions with all of the geographies around the world helped me understand some of different working cultures, not everything is done as in the US. I was able to build strong working relations with all of the global leaders and their support staff. This aided greatly to our quarterly revenue forecasting and annual planning. It allowed me to provided guidance and direction to meet company goals. One of the biggest challenges was with the large time zone differences with our far east locations.
I was also fortunate to have a strong VP leader that was committed to excellence and wanted to see her staff succeed and grow as individuals.
The overall workplace culture was relaxed, you were allowed and expected to carry out your responsibilities with little or no supervision.
The most enjoyable part of the job was the core group of individuals that made up our team, each one was not only a strong individual contributor, but was willing to jump into any team effort needed as adhoc project arose.
Pros
Ability to work remotely
Cons
Slow Corporate decision making/ redtape
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IBM is overall a good company to work for. The issue is that everyone knows everyone so if something were to happen they protect their people. The work life balance is good, they offer remote work if needed which is always a plus. The location that I work for is small and not much of a team. They don't really respect women or treat them as equals. They have a really high churn rate that scares the employees due to massive layoffs that frequently occur.
could be the best personal development plan. great!
Great management. Work/home balance is 50/50. 99% consultants. You will work with highly-skilled, highly dedicated individuals focused on the delivery of IT Service support.
Great place to work. The position was moved from ATT to IBM the same work position was transferred to IBM. Unfortunately position was moved out of country.
very challenging environment depending of the level you enter and the area. I am sure for junior level resources it is good but there is a lot of cut throat partners who really do not want you around if they thinking you are encroaching on their territory even if you add value.
A flat management structure, helpful people and creative minds.
organization attention to detail punctual friendly flexible
customer-oriented quality orientation
work culture depends on your team, as well as morale. Overall satisfied with my experience. Not much room for advancement. OT is considered a bad word. Great benefits, though the 401k match is only once a year.
Numerous solutions available to meet client's needs. Exercised internal collaboration to bring the right resources to new revenue generation pursuits.
Very siloed management structure. Unimaginative top executives run the corporation like a mutual fund with strategy limited to M&A, divestiture & layoff decisions.
typical work day involde desktop operations Management and management of tickets and teams management of incidents and requests
thumbs up enjoyed my experience with this company
would recommend to future applicants
IBM downsizing 50,000 employees. Unless you are work for a growing area your position will be eliminated. This is because of Red Hat acquisition that spent $34 billion. Now all other IBM solutions are being either sold to pay for Red Hat acquisition or more layoffs are being done. Most managers are politically motivated to reduce head count and they do. Plus, the managers hired former IBM associates in jeopardy to work for them and then they lay off people they have no past relationship with. It is a very toxic environment. Be careful!
Pros
Some smart individual contributors
Cons
Toxic political cut throat environment to survive
IBM was a great company to work at. My job was initially transferred from AT&T to IBM in the spring of 2019. In October 2019 my group was downsized with the work going to the Philliphines.
Pros
Good benefits
Cons
Not helpful in finding job during downsizing