You do not want anything to do with the Cloud Innovation Lab - Senior DevOps Engineer IBM Employee Review

1.0
Feb 23, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some cool tech in the stack and the tools used to build the CI/CD pipeline. Good cafe in the building.

Cons

No Onboarding, No Engineering Documentation, Poor Collaboration and Communication and a hostile work environment. When my manager was replaced with a new one, he proved to be an inexperienced and a bully and as he was assigned to work for a manager who was also a bully, I had no choice but to file a formal complaint with HR and with the head of the business unit when without giving any negative feedback, my new manager singled me out from the group as the only person that was not allowed to work from home several days a week as had been promised by the hiring manager. I was also singled out as the only person in the group that had to work specified hours. My formal complaint generated a witchhunt. I provided digital proof of my case that made it clear that anything negative that was being said about me was false, but it was ignored. During the witchhunt, the head of the business unit even interviewed 2 employees who had worked with me 15 years earlier in a different type of Engineering group (QA) to see what they had to say about my performance at that time. My Employment Lawyer stated that a court would not look kindly on such an inappropriate tactic. I was not alone in my concerns about our new management chain as our Architect left the company shortly after the change in management and others left the group over the next few months as well. Worst work experience I have ever had in 36 years in the industry across companies of all sizes.

Explore other reviews about IBM

5.0
Apr 20, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You can find good mentorship since many people stay for a long time.

Cons

Onboarding process and goals from HR are inconsistent.

4.0
Aug 26, 2014
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...

636
avatar
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.
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All