IBM reviews

Watching out to see if you are in this quarter's RA (redundancy action). Assume you will never get a pay rise (because you won't). Wonder at the mindless paperwork (I live in the UK but worked in Europe, so I had to fill in endless forms and interviews to see if I should pay tax in the UK or the host country - despite EU law being clear that I could work abroad for up to 2 years prior to paying tax in the host country. Getting expense forms rejected as you didn't itemise the tax out. Getting expense forms rejected as you did itemise the tax out. Sitting in airports for 6 hours as getting the later flight saved IBM $10. Watching the CEO award herself a $5 million bonus, despite 20 consecutive quarters of declining turnover. The culture is to stab your colleagues in the front and hoard knowledge - never share - you are judged against them, so if you can make them look bad do so. Personal Business Committments (PBC). At the start of the year you make up 30 or so of these and are judged on how well you meet them, not on how well you do your job. So if your job changes, you are screwed. Turn down chargable work to write white papers that no one will read - this makes sense to meet your PBCs. So just no. IBM 20 years ago was an employer of choice. Now it's one to avoid at almost any cost. And to add insult to injury 2 years after I left they threatened me with legal action if I didn't pay them almost £300, with no explanation of what the alleged debt was for. To cut a long story short, they backed down when I pointed out to them that what they were doing was illegal and I welcomed seeing them in court. 6 months after I left they asked me to return. Never!

Abysmal management, finances and direction. Zero direction or idea what they are doing. Good troops still try to help clients but constantly hampered by clueless management (who only care about their pay packet and culling troops) and increasingly poorly skilled recruits often offshore but now recruiting poorly skilled locals as well to cut cost but deliver very badly at the same time. Strategy such as it is is just wrong and badly done anyway. Many lies given to staff daily.