IBM

I'm sorry, but really none at all.

I was hired for my second job after working with Python at a previous company. I had just completed the Austin Community College courses in Python and Java.

As soon as I was hired, I was sat at a desk and told to manually test a website. I asked for github access and was denied, even read-access. I asked the PMs to include me in scrums and assign me tickets; the PM never talked to me. Every time I would go to his desk, he would say he was busy, every single time. I had no idea what features the devs were working on. When I tried to ask devs directly, my boss would say I was 'bothering' them. I was told not to talk to the devs ever. I was told I was hired for my 'customer service' abilities and shouldn't expect to code. My boss hadn't added me to any jira boards or introduced me to a single person in development. I brought up to my boss how I was expecting an engineering org to work with QA—that I would be involved in scrum ceremonies where work was ticketed, assigned to a developer, and then tasks assigned to QA for either manual or automation. I was told by my boss to instead just keep testing the same UI over and over, "like driving a car up and down the road, then left and right, then diagonal". I was baffled. I also mentioned that I was hired as an automation engineer, and my boss told me "not to worry about that".

A few months in, the company announced that they were switching to a python test automation project, which is something I had recent experience in. When I asked to work on that, I was told I didn't have a Computer Science degree and didn't have engineering experience, so I was denied.

I tried to bypass management at this point and talk to the engineers on that time. At one point I told someone I was sleeping 4 hours a day because I was required to be in both the 5:15 AM standup and the 11:15 PM standup by my boss. This standup included a bunch of people in India that I had no idea what relation they had to me and seemed to be working on a different project. I just knew I was mandated to be on the call. I was also taking 9 hours of college credit to prove I was "good enough" to code, even though I did have an MIS degree and several years of experience when they hired me. IBM was clear that they only counted Computer Science degrees, so I was taking classes that would qualify me for that degree. The person I was talking to about my sleep issues told me 4 hours of sleep is too many; I should only sleep 2 hours a day. I should also mention that IBM's campus was pretty far from where I lived, and having to attend both a late night and early morning standup was wearing on me so much that I rented out my condo at a loss of $100 a month to a friend and then got a studio apartment near IBM for the year. During this time period, I had to switch my internet but needed to secure the apartment before AT&T would switch my line over. Once I got the keys to the apartment, I requested to move my internet and was told it would take about 10 business days. My boss told me I needed to get internet 9 days earlier or I'd be fired, even though I'd already escalated the request and was given the earliest date. Keep in mind, I was ONLY moving because of IBM's standups. Not having internet for 9 days would be added to my PIP.

Six months in, I was also told there was an issue in the code bubbling up from customer service. When two people pressed a button in the UI at the same time, there was an API error. I was told that I was directly responsible for fixing this issue. I asked how I could be responsible for a race condition when not only was I not the developer, but I wasn't even given github access and able to see the repo that was causing the issue. I was put on a PIP.

I quit this job the morning and hour I was hired a year later. I was unable to quit earlier because I took a signing bonus that I couldn't afford to pay back before then. I was in a lot of medical debt when I took the job.

The nature of the work also made it very hard to get another job. I had no idea how to present what I was doing in interviews. Eventually, to interview better, I started a github project using my own name and started automating the public-facing website. This project never integrated with IBM as a company and was never looked at by a single person except me, but it was the only experience I was able to get at this job doing the thing they supposedly hired me for.

Also, the benefits are awful. Due to a chronic illness, I usually max out my insurance. IBM's max was $15k, so I incurred $15k in medical expenses the year I worked for IBM on top of my previous medical debt.