IBM

It was a good place to work. Flex-time and flex-workplace let you better balance work and personal life, and projects were interesting.

Work culture when I started in the early 90s was extremely favorable to valuing employees as individuals and not as mere numbers. Mind you, that changed quickly in the mid-2000s.

PBC ratings distributions are broken, and politics between working groups and employees within working groups only exacerbate the problem.

Low-key and introverted solid performers who meet and exceed all objectives are often underrated in comparison to louder, self-promoting employees who far too often are more talk than performance. Being underrated at IBM means no raises, no promotion, and more and more no job. Flash versus substance – you would think a company like IBM would know the difference.

Constant pushes to increase productivity and work smarter were totally understandable, but at some point, you just can't draw any more blood from a stone.

I was one of the lucky ones who got to stay by increasing personal productivity to the point where, in my last year, I was doing work that was once done by four people. Of course, I was now working 12 to 16-hour days on a regular basis, and there were stretches where I had to work around the clock to meet deadlines.

Concerns expressed to management about workload were met with the response, "But we are competing with India." Schedule pressures and workload continued to escalate.

Then went my health. I had to get out or literally risk dying.

The model seemed to be: grind them harder and harder until you burn them out, and then get fresh new hires to replenish the meat grinder. This may be tolerable when you are young, but less and less so as you age and assume other responsibilities in life, such as being around for a family.

None. It would not be taken up by management anyway, who are themselves under pressure, and besides, you are competing with IBM branches in India and now China.

Maybe IBM should just close its North American project development doors completely. It would be more honest to its employees if it did.