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      IBM

      Engaged Employer

      IBM reviews

      3.9

      78% would recommend to a friend

      (107,148 total reviews)
      avatar

      Arvind Krishna

      76% approve of CEO

      68% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      4.2

      Diversity & inclusion

      4.0

      Culture & values

      4.0

      Work/Life balance

      3.8

      Career opportunities

      3.6

      Compensation and benefits

      3.5

      Senior management

      IBM has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 107,148 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).

      Ratings by demographic groups

      Reviews by job title

      107K reviews
      2.0
      Jan 29, 2016

      Bad managment that relies on smoke and mirrors

      Senior hardware design engineer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Flexible work schedule but expect to work much more than 40 hours a week. If a new hire they will treat you better for awhile until the favorites are chosen and the next batch come in.

      Cons

      Below average pay for above average work load. No pay raises for several years in a row. Raise have been below CPI since Gerstner left. Lower level management is very political and petty. Upper level management completely clueless. They think being a "me too" company will lead to profits.

      5.0
      Jan 20, 2016

      Big company & amazing IBM transformation

      Client solutions executive
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      The shift from a hardware-centric to service-centric and now to a cloud and cognitive service model. A transformation of this kind is not easy for any company with more than 75,000 employees let alone 400,000 that IBM has world-wide. Google reports at 57,000, Apple around than 80,000, Blackberry/RIM at 7000 (at its peak) to put into perspective. Blackberry led the market was too comfortable and failed to transform to market demands. Many, many of the leaders and executives at IBM have Engineering, Computer Science backgrounds - they aren't your typical no-work experience MBAs. They make decisions very analytically (as Engineers tend to do) with their clients in mind trying to help solve business and world problems. That problem was once mainframes, servers, storage and systems; evolved to implementing and building IT solutions around that hardware; now it's an hybrid cloud implement-yourself-slash-business-service. Very few companies own the entire ecosystem (mainframe, business solutions and cloud availability) - IBM does. The cognitive guys can request improvements and features to the hardcore engineering server CPU team for maximum optimization- making the most advance system easily available to all businesses. No doubt, IBM is years ahead the competition with their Watson Services and it's built on an ecosystem that is in line with the CIOs and CTOs initiative going into the future. The platform also lends well to startups and smaller companies being able to leverage and take advantage of IBM's top-notch enterprise and industry services at flexible, scalable and affordable rates. This is new ground for IBM that was typically reserved for big firms and enterprise companies. Way to go, IBM!

      Cons

      Old sellers not willing to adapt to what the industry is demanding will have a tough transition. Again, 400,000 employees makes it difficult for any company. People can get comfortable and changing becomes difficult. Again, Blackberry/RIM is evidence of being the smart phone leader who failed to transform and was just barely saved from a bankruptcy by being acquired for pennies on the dollar. Again, Jim Balsillie, former CEO of Balckberry, had no engineering or computer science background, and tried to run the company solely with his Harvard MBA, which he ran into the ground. IBM has a lot of work to transform a lot of people who are more comfortable doing things the old way.

      1.0
      Feb 3, 2015

      How times have changed

      Research scientist
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business Outlook

      Pros

      Great work life balance. Management will accommodate you for your family need. Many years back, my wife suffered from a rare chronicle decease and required hospitalization and then home care. My manager basically allowed me working from home (and hospital) all the time while she we being treated and recovering from the illness. I really appreciate that. Furthermore, the base pay is very competitive here at IBM Research, although bonus is almost non-existent nowadays. Working atmosphere is very friendly and people are mostly nice and cooperative. If you are a female and at a child bearing age, IBM in general is very accommodating, even more so in IBM Research.

      Cons

      IBM as it is now is the antithesis of successful start-ups and their even more successful descendants (the like of Google, Facebook etc.) There is a lack of youthful energy here. More of us endeavor to try to save (or change depending who you talk to) the dying business model and only a few have the luxury of being given the space to be truly innovative. There is a great brain drain going on. Really smart people are quitting left and right to go the the aforementioned companies. For many of us, we are "Research" in name only. Sure we have the great "Watson" fame, but most of us toil on old IBM technologies and try to squeeze out one more drop of competitiveness out of the outdated systems and tools. While things here are going downhill slow motion style, the rank and file bear the most pains. We are supposed to "innovate" as managers consistently demand of us while themselves mostly doing pointless meetings and power-pointing. Yet our accomplishment is mostly determined by how much direct business impact our work creates. With this conflicting goals, we are really caught between a rock and a hard place. Unless you are a super star that can really balance the two, most of us just submit to the fact that our management can at any time put all the blame on us one way or the other, with nothing sticking to them. In general, I had my good times here. But this is the sad time now. Stay away.

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