IBM: Young grads — stay away. Join if you are lazy and complacent or a Boomer/Gen X. This is a complete sinking ship.
1. Work life balance may be the only benefit that IBM provides you. If you're fortunate to be assigned on a chill team, work from home 1-2 times and work for less than 30 hrs per week all year round. If you aren't so lucky, you'll be working your asses off to pick up the others' slack. Maternal/paternal leave is supposedly good, which is a major perk for people who are 35+ and plan to sit back and watch the company steadily sink to demise in the next two decades until they retire. 2. Lack of talent and work ethic. Every time you try to do things in a different way, people will either yell at you that “that’s not how IBM has done things” or question why you’re adding their workload when they will be paid anyways every two weeks. Pure laziness, complacency, and dumb hierarchy. Countless people start their sentences with “I’ve been at IBM for X number of years" lmaoooo. 3. Inappropriate Boomer jokes that include unjust comments regarding gender, race, and sexual orientation are made both during and outside meetings. Even 33 year old men from Connecticut behave like they are in their 50’s living in Wisconsin. Lack of respect for themselves and others. 4. You will be paid below the market. Summary: This company fails to attract or retain talented, kind, and driven individuals. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but the market knows that you lack the talent or work ethic to go anywhere else if you're there for more than three years. Senior management either severely lacks self-awareness or knows all of the things above yet choose to stay since they're one of them. Just do everyone else a favor and please never leave IBM. Just retire there and don’t ruin the broader tech industry’s culture. Poll: Does this surprise you?
new grads are surprised by a lot!
I imagine it is full of bureaucratic paper pushers
Yep. Every stereotype you've heard about the company is accurate. I tried to give it a benefit of doubt (stayed for two years), but nope.
Damn ... no one is surprised 🤣
Ok
To no one's surprise, this is all true. 👌
Was one of the most desirable and envied of places to work from the 50s through the 80s. Sounds like many still there are from those glory years.
IBM and Adobe - the dinosaurs of tech. Oracle and Yahoo not far behind.
Dont forget Xerox and HP. Yes, they're still around.
Afraid that’s true.
This is greatly exaggerated, but fair comments - which by the way can also apply to some areas/teams in most companies, even the best regarded ones
Not an exaggeration. Especially #3
I guess it depends on the geography. I have never seem inappropriate behaviour at IBM, but won’t disclose my geography.
@OP what’s your opinion about Red Hat if you have any? Assuming you experienced some Red Hat culture after acquisition
My take is that it's another short-term, band-aid solution since Red Hat is essentially open-source. I personally think that culture and the quality of the product are the two most important factors, both of which that IBM will struggle to remedy at this point.
All the good Red Hat engineers are likely to hold out as long as possible, or until they're laid off.
You should make a poll “Does this surprise you” Y/N