IBM

A completely ethical and fair environment that gives employees the necessary safety and predictability to focus on the job to do.

Flexible on hours and workplace. Welcomes diversity.

Possibility of working on large, multi-million dollar projects and products. Most senior business and technical leadership are experienced professionals and great people.

Publicly owned, very traditional, and risk-averse, it's a company focused on cost savings, integrated vertical business processes, and global cross-policies and operations. In summary, to avert risk, it is a very slow-moving, traditional, and predictable organization. It would take 20 people just to change a light bulb, another 20 to bill the customer, and 5 others to audit the whole process.

The result of this is that there is very little room for individualism, risk-takers, good use of intuition, and real-time response to a dynamic market.

"Innovation" in go-to-market routes, products, and disruptive strategy is mostly done through acquisitions, despite the large investment in R&D (which sometimes is watered down due to our slow time-to-market).

It's understandable that IBM "sells" predictability and thus is risk-averse. One suggestion is to mix the well-known "IBM acquisition modus-operandi" with some spin-off, spin-in strategies to outsource risks and create high-profitability products and offerings where IBM can give its global reach.

Also, we need to work on HR policies for a more dynamic workforce. IBM is known for relatively low salaries, and there is nowadays no real advantage perceived through the IBM "brand." Start-ups and dynamic companies in the consumer market are much more "sexy" places to work nowadays. We need to be able to differentiate better and have easier ways to let go of underperformers. Global HR policies hurt the ability of 1st and 2nd line managers to give the best benefit for the investment.