IBM

Good life-work balance. Working from home or flexible schedules are never an issue. Generous personal time off policies. Opportunity to play with cutting-edge tools. Great environment to learn about business, marketing, and technological trends.

Working under the cloud of imminent layoffs, in spite of how well one's job performance is, or how much revenue one's project generates, is demoralizing.

Inconsistent professionalism of 1st line and 2nd line managers. If one has a good manager, things will go better. But if one has to report to a manager who is self-serving and paranoid, the IBM experience is horrible. One does not have a choice in a manager. Lots of reorganizations and mini-reorganizations.

Through no fault of their own, many IBMers are trapped in a dead-end project or job role that quickly becomes obsolete.

Many managers are not supportive of the career development of their team members.

While many IBMers are professional, others are defensive, paranoid, and uncooperative, and for good reason. IBM's software group does not produce anything. IBM is in the business of acquisitions and then shoe-horning the acquired business into the IBM way of thinking. Lay-offs, or "resource actions" as they are euphemistically called, are cruel and illogical.

It is very difficult to transfer into another project. Too much paranoia and overprotection.

The employee evaluation system ("Personal Business Commitments" or PBCs as they are "affectionately" called) is ridiculous and a political game. I would not be surprised if managers simply throw darts at a board blindfolded to determine the top contributors and the low contributors.

Eliminate PBCs. They are worthless. They encourage dishonesty and discourage collaboration.

I am saying this as one who was consistently a "solid contributor," and received a few "2+" and a "1."

Be straight with your employees. Executives sound more and more like dishonest politicians. Trust me. IBM employees can see through the lies.

You cannot expect employees to continue to do more and more, with less and less.

My team was devastated by layoffs in 2013, even though new sales was off the charts. Exasperating the problem, dissatisfied and frightened employees decided to leave, and they were not replaced. And yet, we had to pick up the workload from those who were laid off or who left voluntarily.

And what was the thanks we loyal employees were given? "Sorry, no bonuses, no raises, and no promotions."

Our peerless CEO declared that she and her executive team would not receive any bonuses, but yet they cash in stock options worth, in some cases, multi-millions of dollars.

Do you realize how insulting and demoralizing that is?

And then you have the gall to eliminate coffee and even plastic eating utensils from the employee kitchen. It is embarrassing that an IBM employee cannot offer a visitor or a customer a cup of coffee.