IBM

Salary is competitive. People are great to work with. Lots of experienced people. Huge focus on personal training and development, with a huge library of books and courses all paid for by IBM. Encouragement to move teams and expand your skill set every two years. No questions asked work from home and flexi-time; it is the most flexible company I have ever worked for. Safe, lifelong job.

• Stagnant salary, pay reviews and salary increases are not common.

• As a large company, you can be moved, reassigned, or have your general job changed with little or no input from you, and possibly not even your manager.

• A competitive self-assessed year-end review creates tension between people and puts more value in the wrong areas of a person's job.

Remove the review process in place that pits people against each other. My personal experience had team tensions high, with discussions and arguments over who had ownership of work for their reviews.

I would also suggest low-level team events. A lot of people were put off by the large IBM social events due to their size, but would like to have had team or product events.