IBM

You can have a great career path. There is no limit, theoretically.

A lot of new technologies. Every year, there is a new technology to learn, or a new version of a product to gain more knowledge in, or even work with it at a customer site.

There are a lot of resources to use to gain knowledge or to get ready for your customer.

A lot of methods and a lot of theories to use about how you should engage with your customer.

Great experienced and skilled people you can work with, if you have the chance.

You will have the chance to learn how to invent new things and how you keep IBM rights for these ideas.

If you understand the system and you can take the right turn at the right time, then you can stay at IBM forever if you like, like working in any other governmental position.

You have the chance to move to other countries as you have internal insights for other positions in other units. But again, it is not that open, as your country and the other country should approve this move.

It is simply an old company. When a company is old, it is simply because the management is old—old in thinking and old in age. They keep inviting you to invent, while they don't dare to invent in the management path.

Although you can have a long career path, this is for a technical path. Don't think about a management path. It is a path that is not for those who are thinking and using their minds.

In a big company, you cannot control such a huge entity unless you have rules. Sometimes these rules are designed for special countries that have special situations. So you have to accept the system as is, as part of the deal.

With the first sign of a financial problem, the easy and proven solution for the management is to get rid of you. Simply because you are only a cost for them, no matter what you did or you can do for the company… unless you belong to a new area (cloud, analytics, mobile, security, or social). But this is only so far for 2014, because it is changing every year.

You should accept a low salary, simply because you are working for the dream company. One of the great benefits that IBM offers is simply being working for IBM and holding its name. So if you accept that, you don't have the right to ask for more salary.

IBM, at least IBM in Egypt, has not had HR for a long time. There are some efforts to change this, but with the rate of change, they still have a long way to go.

Your career is theoretically without limit. However, practically, it depends on the following:

If I may advise management, there are several levels of management, and each can have different advice.

For first-level management, you have to do your best to enhance your team's skills. Focus on your team's skills and capabilities, not their billability. If they are skilled enough, they will be continuously engaged, but they must have enough time for continuous training in continuously changing technologies.

For second-level management, simply do your job instead of following up.

For executives, please be innovative yourselves, as you keep asking us to be. Try to innovate in new ways of doing your job, not simply following Ginny's thoughts as if she is a messenger from God whose thoughts are always right. You are working with her as our leaders are working in Egypt with the president – same thinking and same ways, like any government in a third world country. Keep your people as the real assets. You keep saying that, but the fact is you are not doing it.