IBM

You can work your own hours as long as you deliver assignments on time. Many work groups will allow you to work from home at least part of the week. Benefits are not terrible, but you will sure pay for them.

Where to begin...

If you are a developer like me, you will face needlessly complicated applications and tools, on the order of being nearly useless due to all the bloat and broken functionality that comes with using them (case in point: RAD). Since many of the accounts IBM has been around for such a long time, you can trust that the codebase will be such a nightmare to maintain that its level of complexity and quagmire of IBM proprietary software will be the only reason the company has not already ditched it for something better.

Compensation is very low for the amount of work you will be performing. Your manager will be so busy with their own projects and managing all the other people under them (40+ people) that they will have no clue what you actually do, or even what project you are on.

The promotion and performance measuring systems are both a total joke. There is nothing personal about it; you fill in some forms and have a talk with your manager, who again, knows nothing of what you do.

Utilization is the word of the day. In the end, all that matters to IBM is how much money you can pry from the customer’s pocketbook.

Lotus Notes is absolute garbage, and you will have to use it every day.

IBM is in the middle of a social transformation and trying to become more like Twitter, Facebook, and the like. We are forced into using new social media-type applications by integrating them into project workflow; it does not work out well.

There are many other complaints that I have about IBM, but explaining them to people outside the company would take much more room than I have in this small amount of space. The bottom line is that IBM is the Titanic, and the captain just ordered the engine room all ahead full, seemingly oblivious to the icebergs.

Good luck, Ginni... at least you have your $4.5 million bonus as a life preserver. I fear the people stuck in the engine room will not fare as well.

Start paying the talented people what they are worth NOW, before you lose everything.

Get rid of the open workspaces; nobody likes them except the wild ducks.

Start building things that matter again, not just software (think System/360).