IBM reviews

There is absolutely no respect for the individual. Sr. management could not care less about the employees. They are on a mission to move work offshore to India and China, and get rid of as many U.S. employees as they can. They are even forcing the U.S. employees to train their replacements. Then, employees with 20+ years and excellent reviews are thrown out like yesterday's trash. These are not low level employees -- we are talking about senior professionals in IT, finance, etc., who are highly educated and high performing employees.

Anytime there is a large number of people, communications become harder. Project managers or engineers might think about the number of communication channels, which is n(n-1)/2 where n = number of stakeholders (Ref: PMBOK, 3rd ed.). For 330,000 employees, that means IBM has 54.4 billion communication channels. Obviously that is difficult to manage and work within. Recognizing that there is an inherent challenge in the liquidity of knowledge and information can help employees find ways to solve those problems, such as developing wikis for small teams. The other downside to having that many employees means that every time the company spends $3 on each employee, you just spent $1 million. Many employees don't understand this problem, and instead complain about only receiving free ice cream in the cafeteria after project milestone is reached when their cousin at the unprofitable, but well funded, start-up is getting free coffee and soda every day.