IBM

There's only one benefit when working with IBM: work from home. And that makes it all worthwhile for many.

Unfortunately, they know this and hold you and your family hostage with low salary, no pay raises, intimidation, long hours, and no perks (like no internet reimbursement, no cell phone, a small, cheap workstation, etc.).

Everything else. Management has no idea what to do. There's always a general business direction crisis of some sort in play. Many goal-oriented buzzwords appear and disappear without cause, usually daily.

Bluemix, Cloud, Mobile, Analytics, etc. But they all lose support in a short time.

You'll be harassed by all levels of management, as it flows from the top down. You'll be assigned to work some new strategic objective, such as Watson, but pulled away when bad numbers are publicized. You'll be forcibly placed into another in-vogue area, such as Cloud, but that will fail also within a few years, where you'll be moved to yet another hot item, such as Agile development.

Sometimes you'll be sent to an entirely different department, perhaps over to customer-facing duties where the customer contract is chaotic and usually in legal contention. There you'll sit for months doing nothing, except filling out billing forms to keep your utilization numbers up.

From there, you'll be pulled from that "account" to another (different) customer, where the cycle starts again. Then you'll likely end up back in Mobile or something, where one will languish for a few years until you're finally RA'd – that's FIRED – not laid off. Along with 20k others in the US and 110k worldwide.

But wait – Ginny said there are 20k job openings. Whew. Thought it was going to be a disaster for a second there.

A quick check of the job openings shows a strange removal of jobs after a one-week posting. You'll print one out and call the hiring manager.

Hiring manager asks where you got the requisition, as they are pulled every week. After you explain, he indicates that there's a global hiring freeze throughout the company, and his department is no exception. Feeling compassionate, he explains why he has to post them in the first place, then remove them 7 days later. And he was never going to be allowed to hire for it in any event. He's busy and hangs up.

You'll miss the usual severance and receive a month's pay before you're escorted to the doors. You'll also forgo your usual 401k match, because they sneakily changed the year's contribution to once/year on December 15th only – and only if you're still with the company on that date.

Then you'll find yourself 57 years old, trying to find a job with the IBM albatross hanging around your neck. You'll think back to when you were 30 years old, where you were confident and cocky, knowing that nothing like this could EVER happen to you. You snickered at the old folks, the 55+ crowd, and wondered why in heck IBM didn't get rid of them so you could get a raise for yourself. But now at 57, your family and kids will look at you in disdain for being unemployed. You've let them down.

Then you'll come to the realization of why IBM's legal department is more than 8% of the company when you try to argue age discrimination. Or why the latest RA took all of your friends over the age of 53, but mysteriously none of the hot-shot kids or young management types.

You'll wonder why there's a list of cons of this company that goes on for 20 paragraphs, compared to just 1 for the pros. You'll wonder why investors don't see the execs wrecking the place in a hysteria, each taking home $15 million/year salaries, with $7 million/year bonuses, and another $45 million/year in stock options. You'll imagine the execs stretched out and sleeping on one of the company's fleet of 20 large luxury private biz jets on their way to the monthly financial meetings in Europe. You'll imagine.

In the meantime, the IRS is after you for some silly 401k malfeasance and has put a lien on your house. IBM has sent your name to the credit bureau for a $920.00 trumped-up travel voucher you supposedly never paid. You'll wonder what has happened, or were you just run over by a bus?

Coming home someday, you stop by the mailbox and notice a letter from IBM. It's from Ginny. She's congratulating you on your "retirement" and offers you a choice of 1) Jelly of the month, 2) a jumpstart cable box, or 3) a magazine subscription. I'll wonder if I should just toss it, or if she's serious. She is, and it gets tossed.

As winter sets in, you'll wonder

How can you advise a hyena? How do you pound love and compassion into a vulture? You don't.