IBM

I used to have many, but now they have all vanished. Work-life balance, which is often touted as a pro, is actually a lie.

There are so many that I won't be able to cover them all, to name a few:

• Work-life balance is a lie: It is true that you are allowed to work from your home, but don't expect flexible hours. On the contrary, your manager will expect you to be available 24/7. Didn't answer that call at 12:30 AM after working 48 hours straight? Expect to be reprimanded; it happened to me.

• Managers are a joke: IBM made the big mistake of promoting only the best-performing salespeople, especially account reps, which don't have a deep understanding of IBM products and technology, to management. Don't get me wrong, some salespeople make great managers, but it is often the exception. This has resulted in management that only thinks about "sell, sell, sell" but doesn't understand the importance of a well-defined and designed solution or of excelling at delivery so you get repeat sales. Nowadays, customers are leaving because they got tired of buying stuff from IBM that just doesn't work, and employees are tired of this "everyone sells" attitude from management. For example, when explaining to a manager why we couldn't sell a solution as he requested, he replied to me: "I am not interested in your technical details; we need to sell."

• Work environment is sad and grim: As a result of poor management and constant layoffs (they are getting more frequent, in some countries even monthly), the work environment is awful. People just don't want to work anymore; they aren't motivated, and the few that remain motivated are losing it quickly.

• The CEO and VPs have no idea what to do: Perhaps you have heard of CAMSS, which only three months before was CAMS, and three months before that was Smarter Cities (internally, some managers changed CAMSS to ACCESS). My point is, top management keeps changing strategy like changing clothes, and don't get me started on the product mix; it keeps changing. Brand names are created and destroyed every quarter; it is chaos. Nobody knows what the real strategy is anymore.

• Most "management systems" are cheap Excel spreadsheets: People would expect IBM, as a supposed symbol of cutting-edge technology, to be a dream management systems powerhouse. Yet, most things are managed by Excel. Many systems exist like Sugar CRM (internally SalesConnect), but are ignored by stupid managers that know nothing about technology and prefer to use Excel. Expect to deliver at least 3 to 5 Excel spreadsheets with the same info, in different layouts, to several managers.

• You won't get the tools you need to do your job: Although some people get Macs, that doesn't mean you will get the right tool for the job. For example, if you get a Mac but need something beyond Intranet access, mail, and Office tools, you will most probably not be able to do your job because you will need a PC for that. And forget about running a virtual machine, because only Windows 7 is allowed inside IBM, and you won't be able to get a legal license; those were sold out years ago. If you get a ThinkPad instead, well... prepare yourself for a 30-minute "do nothing" moment every time it wakes up from sleep. It won't matter if it is a state-of-the-art ThinkPad T460; the software will be so bloated that you will get Blue Screens of Death every day.

In one word: RESIGN. Ginny Rometty and her henchmen have failed to provide real shareholder value. They think that stock buybacks, lots of mergers and acquisitions, and constant cost reductions will return value to shareholders. Perhaps in the short term, but in the long term, you are destroying the company by alienating your most important asset: employees.

Ginni's transformation is a lie. It is like getting the washing machine from the laundry room to the living room, the oven from the kitchen to the bathroom, and the TV from the living room to the kitchen, and then magically expecting the clothes to be cleaner, the food to taste better, and the TV to be seen in ultra-high definition.

That won't work because you just changed the place of things, not their quality or the process. IBM's transformation will fail; it is failing already.