IBM

If you can manage yourself and your networking, IBM can be a very rewarding place to begin a career. With good political skills, a good background, and an active, forceful personality, you can gain access to very advanced technology and some of the best systems-level insights in the Microelectronics industry.

In general, the tools provided are good, many even beyond the leading edge of the industry, as are the interactions with most employees. Be warned, however, that many tools are unique to IBM and their applicability and value to the rest of the industry is at best limited.

This is not a workplace that will suit most folks. It requires a very career-focused individual who can recognize when the work will stop contributing to a career and who is willing and able to quit this job and move on to other opportunities.

IBM Microelectronics is a microcosm of most large companies. It is very politically connected, and without the right connections, your career will quickly stagnate.

As with most large companies, managers are there to get jobs done, and it isn't until you get relatively high in management that most employees are trained for advancement.

I can't emphasize enough: this is NOT the company to work for if you take your eye off your personal career development. If you treat your employment as a job and not as part of a carefully managed career trajectory, management here will push you into jobs that are likely not in your best interest. As a large company, there are many small tasks that tend to be very specialized to IBM, and getting stuck there will seriously stunt your career growth and prospects.

As far as business is concerned, IBM overall has been consistently shipping jobs overseas, and the morale in the company is terrible. Their US employee count has been diminishing, so if you treat your employment here as a "job," you are at serious risk of trouble when a Resource Action comes.

You cannot count on IBM to support employees with retraining or reeducation now like they did when I first joined. In general, the more experienced you are, the bigger the target you are if you're not in management.

Senior management treats IBM Microelectronics rather poorly. They need to either treat it as a full business and make the push into full foundry services with competitive prices, or they need to spin off the foundry and go as a fabless design house. The mix they have now guarantees that they will fail at both design and fabrication.