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While a good learning experience, bad managerial decisions and poor morale are destroying what was once great

Senior Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at IBM for 4 years
April 4, 2013
Brno, Czech Republic
2.0
Doesn't RecommendNeutral OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros

Great to have on your CV.

Good opportunity to learn, as the portfolio of products is quite big.

Easy access to education and certification trainings.

Good possibility to balance work and personal life.

Cons

No interest in keeping good people - inability to provide adequate tools and support, mindset of "go, there are many people waiting for your position."

Incompetent lower management - people who are not organized, with no real leading background, keep being appointed managers. This causes a lot of chaos and stress by not being able to handle the responsibility and organization of work.

IBM tools - for most applications that are already available, IBM has an alternative that is, in most cases, slower, more chaotic, and much less user-friendly, not offering the same functionality as the original. (There are exceptions, of course).

Slow to react to problems and changes due to huge bureaucratic load.

Shift from a customer-centric approach to a bureaucratic process-centric approach, which impacts employee morale and shows a bad image.

Advice to Management

Do what you proclaim on all the promoting materials: start promoting creativity and skill, embrace new ideas, and try to keep experienced people instead of constantly hiring new ones.

Start caring about the customer instead of ever trying to be "covered" by insisting on following procedures where they are actually keeping people from helping the customer right away.

Try to promote capable people into managerial positions, instead of using some of those positions as a "dumpster" for incompetent people.

Push towards completing projects and applications not only into a workable state but mostly to a state where they are easy to use, comprehend, and friendly.

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