Hi everyone. I've been reading posts here recently because I have an offer from IBM and I'm trying to decide if I should accept it. (I don't feel comfortable giving any specifics.) There are a lot of negative posts here. Some are crude and I wonder if that's just for comic effect or a reflection of how things are at IBM. Is IBM really that bad? Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
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To get ahead at IBM, you must lick your boss's an us. And likely his/her/their/what ever boss's an us too. So you gotta ask yourself...
Ibm doesn't innovate from within. The best they can do is buy technology from a smaller company. Oil service companies do the same thing. Ibm doesn't lead in anything. The lawsuits about age discrimination speaks volumes about the board in the same way it does about META when 10 % of ad revenue comes from outright scam advertising and they are ok with that.
Do not do it. It will degrade your mind and body quickly. A picture is worth a thousand words. IBM hires based on race, s-x, looks etc and not on skills. For example this person went from cold calling people who had no interest in hearing from IBM to being an IBM "sales manager" in under a year. Imagine this as your manager. This is the "new" IBM sales mgr they covet. To become and IBM manager used to take 5+ years of exceptional skills and results. Dress appropriately and professionally and stop looking at yourself all day on your phone and posting pictures like this of yourself on the internet to 6B strangers. No thank you. As someone who saw the greatness of IBM in the early 80s, it literally makes me sick to see the dumpster fire it has become. https://lnkd.in/p/gjKpexcC
It is a paycheck… the question is how long can you hope to keep that paycheck coming… unfortunately, it is not up to you, you have no control over anything at IBM.
Good luck!
If you are young and have no family or other obligations, then join but always keep your eyes and ears open to what IBM is doing. All the technology vendors are ruthlessly letting people go right now. Some are putting all their eggs in one basket with AI infrastructure investments in the billions of dollars. Will the investments pay off? Who can say for sure!
As in all things in life the correct answer is “it depends”.
ÌBM is incredibly inward focused and if what they offered you a job for isn’t in IBM’s strategic future then you might be better to pass. On the other hand if they offered you a job that is mainframe, design, or quantum related (two things that IBM has a near monopoly on, and one where their toolset gives them competitive advantage) then you most likely should accept.
Ask yourself this question
“What innovation since 2000 has IBM brought forth to the marketplace that you can name
Outside of mainframe, design, and quantum the answer is closer to nada.
Intel servers (missed it)
Cloud (missed it)
AI (developed it, then let it die on the vine)
E-commerce (missed it)
Internet search (missed it)
Linux (bought it)
Etc etc etc
IBM does not innovate anymore, but rather buys it.
So what does that mean? It means that anywhere IBM doesn’t have a competitive advantage, they are slowly removing themselves from the marketplace. This isn’t good, or bad. It’s just where they are in their go to market strategy and how they view their customers
IBM on your resume for 1-3 years will fool most new employers. That's the only way to use a "career" at IBM. If you are involved in hardware or software development, I can't speak to that. But if your job depends on skilled use of the written English language, you will be disappointed by the combination of AI and "English as a second language" when it comes to communications. It's probably better than no job ... but not by much.
Accept the offer, knowing that all you will be doing is hustling for your next role at IBM or another one outside of the company as soon as Day One starts. If you are the kind of person who can shift your skills, manage up, and engage customers, you will be okay. Keep eyes open and ears to the ground.
If you are early talent, good place to acquire experience, learn from people and move on.
Unfortunately they have large clients and will not run out of payroll any time soon
Pros and cons!
Several replies have touched on this issue, but I think it is useful to place it within a longer historical context.
During the 1980s, IBM was widely regarded as one of the premier technology companies in the world. Its management and leadership were considered exceptionally strong, and other companies frequently sought to emulate IBM’s organizational practices, technical capabilities, and corporate culture.
That trajectory began to change considerably around 1992–1993. A new generation of managers and executives increasingly assumed positions of authority, and the organization began to benefit from the institutional reputation and accumulated credibility established by their predecessors. This created a form of organizational inertia: the strength of the IBM brand could mask an underlying deterioration in managerial quality for a considerable period of time.
A subsequent 2nd wave of more gradual decline appears to have emerged in the following decades, particularly within management and leadership pipelines. I do not intend to frame this as a political argument, but rather as a notable shift in organizational development and talent-management practices. One particularly noticeable shift occurred during the 2010s, as IBM increasingly relied on various employment-based visa programs and international talent pipelines. Whether or not this relationship was causal, the period coincided with what I perceived as a noticeable change in the composition and quality of portions of the management organization.
This became a self-reinforcing issue. As successive generations of managers advanced through the organization, they increasingly promoted and elevated individuals from networks and backgrounds similar to their own. Over time, this can produce a form of institutional path dependence in which managerial selection becomes less about independent evaluation of performance and more about reproducing established networks and organizational norms.
There is also an interesting historical irony here. A lot of these developments occurred during the period when diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives were receiving substantial institutional emphasis. In retrospect, however, it is reasonable to question whether the resulting practices always produced the broad-based diversity of perspectives and experiences that those initiatives were intended to encourage. Ironically these DEI systems began to be leveraged and misused in manners that the programs themselves were intended to counter.
This is ultimately led to IBM’s current organizational state: not as the consequence of a single decision, individual, or policy, but as the cumulative result of several decades of changes in leadership selection, managerial development, organizational incentives, and institutional culture. The reputation built by earlier generations of IBM leadership was extraordinarily durable; however, reputational capital can persist long after the underlying organizational conditions that created it have changed.
IBM is bottom of the barrel now. It has definitely declined over the years but you could always find a nice team to grow your career. I did.
And I had a very good career until the Jill and Jay took over. They work for Matt Loathsome. They both lack a human soul between them and think their sociopathy makes them "hard nosed". They surround themselves with useless Yes Men. Jay controls the "vision" for w3 which is pretty much whatever he says it is, based on his Trump-like gut and sugar won't melt in his mouth before you find a dagger in your back. He will gaslight you to death.
IBM is run by a monster and the only people left in charge are monsters. They lack all talent or creativity. This is not a company you want to work for. There is not a single good place to work now that IBM Research has also been gutted. You've been warned - if you choose IBM, what happens next is in you.
@bd You will find yourself stalled with regards to development, no real carreer opportunity chances and a strange culture where it really depends who asks what to who.
I have been here for several years now and the most of it has happened yet.
Be prepare to not get recognized, find people who mask behind all kind of processes which aren't even consistent and you will have to comply with those. I really would not recommend this place when you have other possible choices to go after.
What has been mentioned elswehere here too pretty much paints the picture. Political toxic sh.thole. Some people go great on such culture, but when you are integer, willing and positive oriented, they will make sure to consume all your energy.
I have never seen such an inefficient and non-behaving environment before. And I have been active working in several companies for over 35 years. This is the worst. (my personal experience and opinion). It is all non-sustainable in many aspects.
If you are a fresh gad, have no other offers and are looking for some experience then go for it for 2/3 years and then join a high growth employer. Peak IBM was the 1980s and since then it has been slowly declining. I forecast no real (post inflation) growth in the coming years, flat compensation and a further sell off of parts of the group with probably just mainframe & mainframe software remaining under the IBM brand. Eventually the legacy customer base for mainframe will make the transition elsewhere and the company will finally die.
As far as culture, innovation, work/ life balance, technology leadership, employee morale. Just to name a few . It doesn’t get much lower. It is so mismanaged. So top heavy with bad leaders. The ship is going down faster every year. I spent 18 years there. I would not recommend it unless you are a fresh grad and looking for experience to put on your resume.
It is not the place people outside think it is. It’s been coasting on an image cultivated in the 1980s and it’s very much no longer the place to be. In general too it’s no longer prestigious
IBM is best described as a shithole's shithole. Go ahead and accept the offer if you like that kind of thing,