Am I wrong, has employee evaluation turned into a joke? Does it really matter what sacrifices you make to get good appraisal. It seems now the only smart thing to do is pray you not laid off cause you are a high earning employee due to past hard work.
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@3r8 can’t names the names. It will just get deleted. Just ask people it’s very obvious who is being referred too. There is enough clues to easily figure it out. Which sort of supports the validity of what was stated.
Absolutely wild. I honestly thought I was losing it because it felt like I was the only one seeing this. Seeing you share that was a real relief—made me feel a lot less crazy. And the fact that, under her watch, they consistently missed quarterly contractual targets, yet she still had a meteoric rise? That’s… hard to reconcile. Make it make sense. He must really like her ;)
Regarding the situation of Huiming’s favorite, a senior manager in the etching department, she received three significant promotions within two years. What were the specific reasons for these promotions? What were the rationale and evaluation criteria for these multiple promotions in such a short period? What specific achievements or improvements in skills did she demonstrate? Currently, there is no clear performance evidence to support these decisions. Therefore, why was she promoted multiple times and frequently transferred to different positions in such a short time?
@1td
While this particular move, and others like it, are being publicly lauded and celebrated, a more impartial assessment would treat them as cautionary signals rather than successes. The repeated reshuffling of the same group of leaders does not reflect organizational health; it suggests unresolved structural issues. In a stable and well-functioning environment, such levels of internal rotation would be unnecessary.
@n3
LOL, I just saw on LinkedIn that ol’ “Director of process tech and 300mm Fab” up there in Albany got promoted again—to director, again. How many times is that now, five in three years? Shoot, that’s gotta be some kind of record. That fella’s got more lives than a barn cat and always manages to land on his feet.
@y8 IBM surrendered it's ethical badge when it hired corrupt Indians and McKinsey to manage and run the business. It continues to fail as these losers fail to do the right things particularly following the IBM Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs). Can you say FAIL often ?
They swotched to force ranking this year, from a far more open ended and reasonable review process. The current process, you are told as a manager, doesn't affect employment. Then they lie to you and when your employee that is pong overdue for a promotion, IBM tells you that you did not give them a perfect score (despite them discouraging perfect scores), and they use the artifically forced bottom of the scores for layoffs. Upper management is not honest in how they use reviews anymore. It use to be used solely as guidance for managers (like raises) but they went back to forced ranking.
I am also part of ALB and am aware of several very recent situations. Unfortunately, HR no longer feels effective, and the hotline does not provide real support. Some individuals raised serious concerns directly to VP HB, and the outcomes were the exact opposite of what our ethics trainings assure us will happen. These appear to be clear cases of retaliation—people were moved, placed on PIPs, and let go during the recent RA, while perpetrators were promoted. Many of us are aware of this. It is deeply disappointing, the system in ALB does not seem to be working and is broken.
@n3 and of course the anonymous tipline (Speak Up) and reporting on wrongdoing never works at IBM and it never will in a billion years. There is always retaliation, and ways to drum out whistleblowers out of the company on some flimsy pretext or the other. Happens in IBM Consulting all the time. Probably in other IBM divisions too. The IBM Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) are a total myth, except for fools who believe in them. Fostering a culture of trust and accountability with defined processes for confidential, unbiased handling is the last thing you will ever find from Alvind and the Pipmunks. Been there, done that.
@n3 Don’t expect this to change. I was a manager in research (Yorktown not Albany) for a few decades. In the 90’s I got saddled with a smooth talking technical light weight. He was a world class squeaky wheel. Back then evaluations were 4-point — 1) walks on water; the second coming 2) most folks 3) seriously lacking 4) begin planning separation.
I rated the light weight a low 3 and indicated that I would have no issue giving a 4 if upline preferred. The 2nd line was a bit of a schmoozer and rounded this guy up to a 2 since they had personality traits in common. The 3rd line had multiple daily visits from the squeaker explaining his grand contributions and the lower level managers who simply weren’t able to appreciate him. The 3rd line extended to his fellow schmoozer and brown noser the professional courtesy of a 1 and a tongue lashing for us in lower management. (Naturally because of distributional guidance and quotas, other employees took the hit to make room for this guy)
A few years later, this guy left research and repeated the cycle in software group where he spent many years as a technically incompetent DE pulling the same stunts before someone powerful enough saw his true colors. He parlayed the DE position into a senior technical position at one of the big then-new cloud companies. Predictably, he had a steep upward trajectory there too until someone showed him the door.
Pooling my experience and that of now-departed old-timers and my former protégées, I know these games were common in Research from the early 60’s through this month’s 2025 evaluation cycle. They have a track record of over half a century of doing the same thing. IBM is an old dog; new tricks are not its thing.
In case you were wondering, this sort of thing is behind over half of junior technical leadership appointments ( team lead through Director level). Higher levels also involve games, but the game rules are different.
The process is designed to put manipulable bozos in high places so that a select few can pull all the strings. Look at IBM Research’s current “Chief Scientist’ for an example of this.
@ky
And then you’ve got their toadies, the ones who get all the special treatment they sure haven’t earned. I work out at the Albany research site, and everybody here knows there’s a tight little inner-circle club runnin’ the place. Those folks always seem to land on their feet—survive, benefit, and prosper—no matter what, while more deserving people get left in the dust, and for no logical reason I’ve ever seen.
Just in the last year alone, we all watched some downright egregious moves made for a select few, along with plenty of cover-ups and hush-ups around some pretty scandalous behavior, all to protect that inner circle. Anywhere else, that kind of thing would get looked into and investigated. But in Albany, it just gets swept under the rug, and the same people end up getting shuffled around and bumped up like nothin’ ever happened.
A very smart recruiter once shared this gem with me: if you’re not good enough at your job you’ll be fired. If you’re too good at your him, you’ll be fired. The trick is to be mediocre. After many jobs across several large corporations including IBM, this explains what I observed about who is rewarded and for what.
While it is “bullsh-t” it does hold real world consequences
Alvind is getting Porky. And Jim Krabanaugh is getting Porkier
Evaluations are a joke. I had a manger that rated the brown noses high and others low. One person rated high no one the account on the wintel side knew what he did
It's always been a joke!
It’s all bullsh-t. We have all seen that the brown nosers and the favorites always bump up despite other folks having a once in a decade stellar year. It is all rigged. We have all see. It can all point to examples of this. And that is the problem here!
During my career at IBM, I struggled with the end of the year performance evaluation. I had to submit it to be evaluated by technically re--rded id1ots, incompetent and snake oil salesmen. So, my end of the year performance write never exceeded few bullets.
Also they pick a low performer at least twice a year from every group of 6 in addition to the mass layoffs
I submitted my evaluation with what I did but with minimal information. I really have no hope. Been interviewing in light of probably a large layoff coming up in Q1.
Why are your two options prayer and sacrifice? If you're doing useful work, articulate it in your review.
kiss as much behind as possible
for the love of gosh, don't be competent
management hates looking foolish
Nobody needs desktops. So, good luck.
I don't have to worry about this anymore. IBM is going to do another RA in Q1. While Alvind and his PiPMonkeys feed like pigs out the trough
Less than 4 billion in cash on hand. I am living my best life since I got RA'd.