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      IBM used to be a great company....not anymore - Director of Sales IBM Employee Review

      1.0
      2 Jan 2017
      Director of sales
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      IBM is a large international company with many divisions giving prospective employees many options to choose from and ample opportunity to work around the world.

      Cons

      I worked for IBM for 29 years. The company today is not recognizable compared to the IBM I started with in the 1980s. IBM has become a hostile place to work. Upper management lacks integrity and they do not value employees any longer. They do things to create the illusion that they do, but believe me, they do not. IBM is run by Finance and IBM cares about their bottom line above all else. Above their clients. Above the quality of their products. And definitely above their employees. Here are a few examples of working in sales at IBM: 1. IBM recently reorganized in the US 3 times in 18 months beginning January of 2015. This realigned sellers (both technical and sales) with clients each time. Very disruptive. This caused many sellers to have to start over three times in 18 months. I don't care how good of a seller you are, it is difficult to create pipeline and close deals in a 6 to 12 month period in IT. So just recently, IBM pulled the performance for the last three 6 month quota periods for all employees. If a seller or technical resource had two halves, out of the three, where they were below 60% attainment, the employee was fired based on performance with no consideration of the impact of the three reorganizations. This speaks to my comment about IBM lacking integrity. 2. IBM is selectively laying people off under a program called "skills for growth". Business units are instructed to select a % of their org and lay them off with the ability to replace that individually with an outside hire. This is not performance based at all. It is a subjective selection based on politics. Regardless of your track record, performance or history with the company, you can get laid off if you are in the wrong place. IBM is essentially laying off middle aged resources in exchange for newer outside highers with no justification. 3. IBM is "over the top" process driven. To the point that process overrides common sense. Process is all that upper management sees and it disconnects them from what is really happening in the field with real customers. Again, IBM is ran by finance. 4. IBM Management is abusive and hostile to their employees. Yelling, f-bombs, irrational decisions and direction. Sellers need to be accountable but IBM has taken it to the extreme in a very destructive way. I could go on and on but my advice to anyone looking to join IBM....DON'T. There are much better tech companies out there that will treat you with dignity. Also, quotas are not fair or rational and over time IBM will set you up for failure.

      Explore other reviews about IBM

      5.0
      10 Jun 2026
      Marketing intern
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Relocation bonus and welcoming team

      Cons

      Very large and corporate at times

      4.0
      26 Aug 2014
      Advisory engineer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      Disclaimer: A lot of what I'm writing below of course depends on the work area and management chain. But I found this to be fairly pervasive policies in IBM in my 9+ years with the company. 1. IBM's policies and management are very flexible when it comes to working remotely or accommodating various life situations (sick days, doctor visits, etc.). Management is encouraged to measure an employee by their work and impact, and not by hours spent at their office. 2. Great colleagues! Though unfortunately, many have been leaving due to the instability of IBM's HW development business. 3. At least in my area, there's a high level of flexibility on which projects should I undertake based on my and my management assessment of business impact.

      Cons

      1. Unfortunately, IBM still uses the "normal distribution" rating system, where at the end of the year each employee is ranked as a top contributor (5%), above average contributor (15%), average contributor (~75%), and bottom contributor (5%). This curve is difficult to apply in the R&D world, where you may have many members of the team working long and hard hours, and end up being "average contributors" at the end of the year, because there just isn't room for all to be top contributors. 2. The above may not be so disturbing, if only IBM didn't practically cancelled all raises, performance bonuses and incentive for the non top-performers. I've had a consistent "above average" rating in the last 4-5 years, and my raise and performance bonus were ridiculous mere 1.5-2% of my salary. Were I rated "average contributor" I would have gotten NOTHING. So you can imagine that people can go year after year without any raise to their salary. From talking to manager friend, this is IBM's way to eliminate the non-top-performers without having to fire them, as part of its direction of reducing US manpower. 3. Hiring freeze in many areas - again, as part of IBM's attempt to reduce its workforce across North America and Europe we see many jobs move to the India and Far East markets. This is of course upsetting to see local teams shrink and disappear, especially when many great local IBM colleagues and experts begin to drop out. From my experience thus far working with India SW teams - they are still very far away from the standards I would have expected from US and Europe based teams. 4. Poor top down communication about company's and divisions' future. Employees learn from rumors and news websites what's about to come...

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      IBM Response
      10y
      Thanks for sharing your experience, and we're glad that you've had a positive experience working with talented colleagues and taking advantage of IBM's programs. IBM is in the midst of a major transformation, --our Systems business is going through its own changes to strengthen competitiveness. Change is never easy. As part of our transformation, we just launched a whole new approach for how we are coaching employees, delivering feedback and managing reviews. No distribution guidelines or what some think of as 'stacked rankings." What's particularly great is that this was co-designed with our employee base from all over the world... to the tune of hundreds of thousands of page views, comments, on-line debates and discussions. IBMers even named the new system Checkpoint, to reflect the regular feedback rituals we're adopting. Managers are more empowered with the new methodology to help them acknowledge the great work of their teams and help their employees develop professionally. These steps and more are showing up in our employee surveys as well. So IBMers are feeling the change. We are confident these changes will help us in continuing to attract and retain great talent.
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