back to article Go on IBMers, tell us what you really think

If an IBMer of your acquaintance appears to have shed some stress, we've discovered the reason why: the company is circulating its annual “Engagement Pulse” survey of employees' attitudes towards the company. The parts of the survey seen by El Reg are mostly anodyne, asking questions like whether managers have managed well, …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: I don't mind

    Overengineered. Out of touch. Uninteresting.

    Positive, ah, nothing comes to mind sorry.

    1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

      Re: I don't mind

      If that's all that comes to mind, then I'm sorry for you. I spent a good few years working with and around IBM, it's a truly gigantic company with good parts, great parts and crap parts. Like pretty much every other Gigantocorp. One thing I do remember is that the people at ground level were amazing; I never met an IBMer I didn't respect or couldn't get on with.

      IBM was also, unlike it's peers at the time, willing to change and learn. You told them something was crap, and they're move heaven and earth to make it better. Didn't always work, but if it didn't it wasn't because they didn't do their damnedest to fix it.

      Fond memories here.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I don't mind

        Sounds like a different company that I spent 15 years at. I'm glad you have fond memories but for a lot of us its very much not the case.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I don't mind

        @Elpuss, I'd be interested to know when and where you worked at IBM. I joined at the end of the Gerstner era and back then it was a great place to work. It started to go downhill very soon after.

        Before Palmisano and the downsizing started, teams were encouraged to innovate (albeit in their own, insular, IBM-centric way) and were rewarded for doing so. That stopped. You had to fight for, and were inevitably denied, any meaningful training. If you pointed out something was wrong, you would be punished for it. If you overachieved, you would be punished for it. Pay rises, if they ever came, were below inflation even if you were a top performer. I eventually reached the point where I realised that a PBC 1 was worthless, so I stopped trying and then left.

        I worked with some very good products and some pretty terrible products while I was there. The biggest issue is those good products (which are profitable) have become worse as attempts are made to shoehorn features in (think what a bloated mess Lotus Notes became). This process does require innovation to get it to work and there are patents aplenty to prove that (one area where people are still rewarded) although I'm not convinced of the value of most of these.

        The reality is IBM "innovates" mostly nowadays through buying other companies who have done that bit already. IBM takes the product, moves all the development to somewhere cheap where they don't understand it (while the real innovators leave and form another startup), blue-rinses it and lets it rot. Then changes its name a few years down the line.

        One thing I do agree on, to an extent, is the people. While management is polluted by backstabbing slimeballs and those who wanted to progress their careers and were told that as intelligent productive people they were worthless and needed to be managers, generally the feet on the ground were diligent, hard-working people, many of whom I'd happily employ if only they built up the courage to leave.

        I have fond memories too and in many ways I miss it. But I know that those days will never return. When I visit IBM sites now, or speak to former colleagues, it's misery, misery, misery. In fact, there are three words for you.

        Here's another three: it's a shame.

        1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

          Re: I don't mind

          @AC I was a contractor at IBM 1995-2001 (Based in Hursley but spent most of my time in Bedfont Lakes), with a 1-year secondment to a business partner in 1999. I moved across to the same partner in 2001. I now work for myself, but am still involved in the IBM ecosystem; and yes an awful lot has changed. In fact, when my partner secondment ended in 2000, I almost didn't recognise the company I came back to.

          I still stay in touch with a lot of current and ex-IBMers, and they tell me the company is changing now faster than ever. From the people I talk to, IBMers are divided into 3 groups; the old guard who remember how it used to be (they're eternally disappointed in the company as it exists today), the new joiners who came on board in the last 5 years or so (they're generally positive, although they don't feel any loyalty and only stay as long as their compensation package remains viable), and managers. Managers tend to be one of two types; Excellent (usually those that came out of the field and worked their way up), or catastrophically bad. I don't recall any 'average' managers.

          Innovation is an interesting one. Deep down I believe IBM still does innovation; some of the fintech/healthtech/blockchain stuff is really interesting and Watson is starting to show some real potential in the deep learning/cognitive arena, but in general IBM innovation is either massively undersold (nobody knows it exists) or massively oversold (a 'decent' product in alpha/beta form is presented as completely finished, world-changing and revolutionary, which inevitably disappoints).

        2. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

          Re: I don't mind

          I joined at the end of the Palmisano era too, and I agree with everything you've said.

          I had some difficult conversations with various people during my time, they really didn't like hearing 'You're doing it wrong' and getting processes corrected was swimming against the tide, especially when it was one of our own products that didn't meet our own internal security standards when deployed as recommended, neither the security standards creators nor the product owners would budge, leaving me as the pickle in the sandwich.

          The PBC process was morale crushing, and I remember the year Rometty announced the funding for Watson 2, and that this year, PBC grade 2's weren't getting a bonus, in the same frikking podcast. It was like 'Thanks for all the hard work, I know you've been thinking the bonus will make the torture of the process worth it, but we're spending your bonus money on a vanity project instead. Still, don't give up, you don't want to slip to a PBC 3 next year, and get put in scope for RA, do you, peon?'

          I don't miss the management fads, 10/10, GDF, LEAN, the 40 hours 'training' goal, or the cascades of emails congratulating someone you've not heard of taking over a role you didn't know existed after the previous incumbent moved onto a new challenging role in something else that sounded made up.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            @Grunty Re: I don't mind

            PBCs were a joke.

            You had to include what your management team wrote and some were very objective.

            Then at the end of the day... even if you hit your PBCs and worked 80 hour weeks to hit your targets, you would still get a PBC of 2 or 3 based on the number of 1's and 2's your manager was allowed to give.

            Oh there's a lot I could say... some of the issues were fixed after I escaped, but still, it was ugly.

            And the games managers played. It was incredible.

            1. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

              Re: @AC @Grunty I don't mind

              Yeah, PBCs were graded on a curve, so it really didn't matter if you did everything that was asked of you well, because if everybody else did that too, some people still had to be marked down, to fit the curve.

              And of course genuine slackers had been taken care of through redundancies, so the bar was totally artificial after the first round following a TUPE.

              Plus of course the goals were a bit too salesy, revenue, cost saving, etc. I worked in Security, I just had to bang on about how we hadn't had any unscheduled downtime due to malware / virus / intrusion so no costs or service credits on my watch, but it starts to look a bit tired if recycled every PBC.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: @Grunty I don't mind

              PBCs were a joke.

              You had to include what your management team wrote and some were very objective.

              Then at the end of the day... even if you hit your PBCs and worked 80 hour weeks to hit your targets, you would still get a PBC of 2 or 3 based on the number of 1's and 2's your manager was allowed to give.

              PBCs might have been useful the first couple of years they existed; I think they were meant to let employees learn/understand their part in the company, and establish direction for teams. They very quickly became nothing more than bullshit paperwork that detracted from doing *real* work. All you did was regurgitate what your manager told you to put in the PBC, who had regurgitated what their managers all the way up the shit-pile had said to put in it.

              The joke of the 1-through-3 PBC levels was you could bust your ass and get a 2-rating (because the couple of 1-ratings had already been handed to the manager's pet) or you could slide by with just enough to avoid a 3-rating. To the higher-ups you'd be just the same. Might have been more useful with 5 or 6 levels, but I don't think IBM managers can count higher than three.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I don't mind

          > The reality is IBM "innovates" mostly nowadays through buying other companies who have done that bit already

          True, but that's the same with many large orgs like Dell, HP, Cisco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Cisco_Systems).

          But they also do some great research too - https://fossbytes.com/quantum-computing-milestone-56-qubit-ibm/

          I hope those running the survey take a serious look at the feedback, these articles and focus on client and employee success. I guess that can really only happen if they can hire a new CEO after Ginni who really believes in this, instead of focusing only on Wall St and the next quarter results.

        4. Ian Michael Gumby
          Boffin

          @AC ... Re: I don't mind

          I came in thru an acquisition.

          I was shown a video message made by Lou.

          Very strong and good messaging.

          Sam? Yeah different.

          We used to use Blue Pages to determine seniority based on the number of levels between the person and Lou / Sam because bands were not equivalent across divisions.

          Unlike you, I met a lot of people, both good and bad. While heritage IBMers could be the worst, I had respect for the guys who came from PWC.

          Oh the stories I could tell... ;-)

        5. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I don't mind

          I worked for IBM at the end of the Gerstner era in Longmont, Colorado. It was my first job out of college and was miserable. It seemed like there was a big age gap between those just starting out and then everybody else who had been there for twenty years. It created this environment where it felt like everyone out of college were doing all the heavy lifting while the veterans were just trying to ride it out until retirement. Management was all about not rocking the boat and making sure corporate back in New York was appeased. That's all it was. There was no big technical insight or innovation there, just political games under the IBM hype. I went by that campus a few months ago. Part of it has been sold off to another company and there are weeds in the parking lot. It does not look healthy at all.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @Lord Puss Re: I don't mind

        Dude!

        Clearly you're a suck up.

        Having escaped the Borg and still have several friends inside (fewer each month due to redundancies and retirement) , I can say as fact that IBM has both talented folks and tossers. I have met many IBMers across the board that I think are the worst excuse for an employee and at all levels of the company.

        Sure, I have fond memories. I also have negative memories too.

        Some of my current friends are part of the Cloud / Analytics work and they paint a completely different picture. Things are seriously messed up and people in charge haven't a clue on what they are doing and how to fix it. One person I know is getting a paycheck just so IBM can boast that said person works there while friends of said person are being made redundant. Others who are technically sharp are being forced in to firefighting drills to the point of wanting to chuck it.

        IBM is in a world of hurt and they don't know how to fix anything.

        Posted Anon for the obvious reason.

        Having left many moons ago, I can still reflexively cite my serial number. Can you say the same?

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I don't mind

        Completely agree with this. What's more, when I worked as a Mainframe contractor upgrading and installing IBM software on large projects, I could not praise IBM enough for the support they gave me even though I was an independent contractor. A truly great company hollowed out by successive incompetent senior management interested in share price in the short term so they can then cut and run with their ill gotten gains.

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I don't mind

        IBM was also, unlike it's peers at the time, willing to change and learn. You told them something was crap, and they're move heaven and earth to make it better.

        The operative word in your statement is "WAS".

    2. DagD

      Re: I don't mind

      how do you feel about converged systems? Relatively new concept?

      no, no.... IBM has been doing that for generations.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    IBM

    describe the company in three words

    I thought that the traditional three were "In Bits, Mostly" ?

    1. Triggerfish

      Re: IBM

      My boss uses

      International Billing Machine

    2. Graham 32

      Re: IBM

      My favourite: Idiots Become Managers

      1. grumpy-old-person

        Re: IBM

        How about "It's better manually" and " Inferior, but marketable"?

        Took years to figure out why an IBM mainframe required a raft of people to care for and feed it, while a Burroughs mainframe had a single person doing it part-time!

  3. jake Silver badge

    Past no return.

    So last century.

    Stuck in mediocrity.

    No longer relevant.

    Mainframes still work. (I knew I could find something positive.)

    Government contracts rock! (Another!)

    I'll stop there for your reading pleasure.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Current IBMer here. Problem is that the survey isn't anonymous; you have to log in with your W3ID before you can start it. Many IBMers (me included) remember the time when IBM used surveys such as this to identify skills gaps (e.g. how much training do you think you require over the next 12 months to do your job - Massive amount, Lots, Normal, Very Little, None) and used the results to orchestrate a round of techie layoffs - getting rid of those that felt they needed lots of training.

    Hence; most IBMers will be INCREDIBLY positive - joy to work for etc etc. Ask them anonymously, and you might get a different response.

    1. goldcd

      Indeed

      Somewhere in middle-management results are being correlated by dept.

      One manager will have a bunch of happy/liars beneath him, one will have a lot who chose differently.

      One will receive praise, one will not.

      It's normally better if your boss returns from meetings happy.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      At this other gigantocorp much the same can be said - people are great to work with, but going up the management chain there is increasing reality-filter - "everything is awesome" - and it is just not done to let bad news enter from the real world.

      That slows down the firm's response to new threats and opportunities & damp out the course corrections that should happen in the early stages of a project when the architecture is not yet set in stone.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      ex IBM-er, 13 years

      It was anonymous, except once I had entered my profession, length of service, mechanism for hiring...there was only one possibly match in my division.

      I for one welcome our machine learning overlords.

    4. Chairman of the Bored

      That sounds remarkably Orwellian

      For me the shock came when my pre-teen daughter asked me. "So what IS IBM?" "Are they really important or something?" Sigh, how the mighty have fallen...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: That sounds remarkably Orwellian

        @Chairman of the Bored - its not just pre-teens, I recently attended a conference that was trying to attract talent for new apprentices and graduates. Many teenage and even older kids would ask 'who are IBM then' and I was genuinely shocked to discover how quickly a household brand can disappear overnight one it stops making things that are actually used by the general public. I imagine that Lenovo is already better known to kids these days.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Back when I was there, management also admitted that if your department/group had bad morale you were asking for "skills rebalancing". And they frankly told us that even the "anonymous" surveys weren't anonymous despite what we were told. Not that any of us ever believed otherwise.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        ...and the layoffs will continue until morale improves.

  5. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Coat

    I trust the three positive words will be printed in large, friendly letters on the next annual report

    I'll get me coat

    Doffs hat (black fedora again) to the late, great Douglas Adams

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Heh - Go Stick Your Head in a Pig doesn't fit the 3-word rule, whereas Share and Enjoy would do nicely I'm sure!

      Tip o'the hat likewise

  6. trevorde Silver badge

    IBM in three words

    Circling the drain

    Not dead yet

    Resource action again

    Another falling quarter

    Ginni's Big Bonus

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: IBM in three words

      Strange the way how similar IBM and HPE have become in their death spirals since their current CEO's took over.

      Both of them could be described as

      Dead Company Walking

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: IBM in three words

        Strange the way how similar IBM and HPE have become in their death spirals since their current CEO's took over.

        IBM and HPE should merge. That way they can save money on their inevitable Chapter-7 filing

  7. Adelio

    IMB

    My brother used to work for IBM UK (in a round about way) IBM won a support contract for PC's, for a large company, they then sub-contracted the actual work to manpower.

    No interest in customer or employee satisfaction. treated their employees like dirt, always passing the buck. Took the contact at below cost and then spent the next few years trying to figure out how to make a profit.

    I get the general impression that a lot of outsourcing deals are taken by undercutting an existing supplier (who could not make a profit) and then they spend the rest of the contract cutting costs (staff) in an attempt to make some money.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: IMB

      That's mostly true, although in many cases IBM are able to take on contracts by using skilled people to get the job done more quickly and efficiently. Or at least that's the plan.

      The reality is you end up with a bunch of people somehow assigned to the project who add little or no value. Project managers that aren't needed (with due respect to PMs who often are invaluable), so-called "experts" who've never touched the product set let alone use it (but are great at bullshitting about it in front of a Powerpoint slide), managers who stop people doing their actual jobs and insist they talk about it instead, and so on.

      Then there are the skills gaps that are usually identified by whoever is scoping the project up. He'll assign a budget for training, but will be told that there's a world-wide training ban so no training allowed. No exceptions. And on that subject there'll also be a world-wide travel ban, with exceptions having to be personally signed off by some exec in a faraway land, so each time someone has to go to site, that £300 of travel you had budgeted for suddenly becomes £1000 for a last-minute plane fare on the day of travel, plus a techie who has to get up at 3AM to get to the airport so arrives on-site utterly knackered.

      Multiply this by every time you need to send anyone to site and you've got a project that's never going to make a profit.

      But this is your budget, not the bean counters'. So it goes down as a successful cost cutting plan.

      Arseholes.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A dead parrot.

  9. Cursorkeys

    IBM

    IPL Borked Mainframe?

    Last thing I had to bootstrap was an LSI-11/73, there was no resident bootstrap in it. Thankfully someone had taped a very yellow sheet of hex to the side.

    Had to take a hairdryer to the (linear!) power supplies on cold days.

  10. mako23

    In terminal decline

  11. mako23

    IBM. Incredibly Broken Moral

    1. Vinyl-Junkie
      Headmaster

      Well the lack of morals is pretty much par for the course in megacorps these days. The lack of morale, however... :)

      (@mako23: Sorry, couldn't resist!)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Mako23

      IBMr === Ive Been Made redundant.

      I bee mediocre

  12. Vinyl-Junkie
    Coat

    IBM

    Implausible Business Model?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Great Big Snakepit

    “What change at IBM has made the most difference for you in the last 12 months?” The toilet paper is now rougher and less absorbent

    “What else do you want to share with your leadership?” Herpes

    There was a level of relentlessly positive middle management taking the worst crap from Armonk and distributing it evenly across the local organisation while smiling and saying it would make everything better. I can think of three words but writing any of them would get this post removed.

    1. Sir Runcible Spoon
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Great Big Snakepit

      but writing any of them would get this post removed.

      Can you hint at them? I'm curious because it takes a lot to get a post removed on here. As long as you aren't legally dropping El reg in the shit-grinder for liability then you're pretty much golden.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I've got three words fo you

    BORING

    BORING

    BORING

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I've got three words fo you

      Of all the words that you could use to describe IBM, positive negative or vitriolic, 'boring' is probably the least appropriate. I think most current IBMers would be happy if their existence actually was boring - at least it would take the worry away from - you know, wondering whether you have a job next Monday.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I've got three words fo you

        at least it would take the worry away from - you know, wondering whether you have a job next Monday.

        When someone would talk about the bonuses they get at their job, I'd say IBM considers your "bonus" is that you still have a job.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Unimaginative

    Unoriginal

    Ordinary

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Stuck competing on price, so moves work to cheap labour countries, so quality takes a hit and reputation suffers, so no longer seen as the premium supplier, so stuck even harder competing on price..

    Morale was bad for a while but after a few years of saying goodbye to all my friends I just came to look forward to my RA day as it was accepted as inevitable.

    Only real issue I had was the mother-effing tool they rolled out to everyone expecting us to track minute by minute the time spent on tasks. Why not just pay someone to stick a pin in my face every 15 minutes. Utterly boneheaded decisions like that which completely ignore the impact on staff because some twit exec had a special moment typifies IBM as a workplace.

    1. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

      Re: mother-effing tool

      Are you talking about CLAIM, or is there some hideous bastard offspring of that idea you now have to deal with?

      Like many things IBM, CLAIM was a decent idea, but poorly implemented. Having a weekly report of how much time we've spent on different clients work, so we can bill them accordingly is an obvious need, but having a weekly report tool that has to be filled in by midday on a Wednesday to avert the dreaded 'Delinquent' status was pure nonsense, we had to guesstimate what we were going to do for half a week, rather than just record it daily and sub it at the end of each week.

      Then take the holiday marketplace, a good idea being able to buy and sell holiday, poorly implemented that we could only do that during a limited window at the start of the leave year, so had to guess what our holidays needs might be if they fell outside the norm.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Pensions

        Apart from CLAIM, now we have TVC. A complete turd biscuit.

        You know those drone monitoring tools for call centers? Yeah, they rolled it out across many other areas. So we now have very skilled guys clicking start and stop buttons when they change tasks.

        Utter fucking insanity.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Pensions

          Apart from CLAIM, now we have TVC. A complete turd biscuit.

          You know those drone monitoring tools for call centers? Yeah, they rolled it out across many other areas. So we now have very skilled guys clicking start and stop buttons when they change tasks.

          As a contractor, it took a while before they tried to force it on me. I managed to get an exemption because I worked with multiple monitors, and their "tool" (in more than one meaning of the word) would stuff itself into some remote corner of the virtual workspace, someplace not displayable on any monitor. And the nitwits who deveoped it had no clue how to fix that (or more likely couldn't be arsed).

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: mother-effing tool

        >avert the dreaded 'Delinquent' status was pure nonsense, we had to guesstimate what we were going to do for half a week, rather than just record it daily and sub it at the end of each week.

        What the other A/C is talking about is something else. They were bringing it in when I left, and I didn't fill it in correctly a single time because i knew I was leaving. Essentially, you were supposed to know weeks in advance which project you were going to be working on and fill in the form accordingly. There's some logic to this as it was to ensure there were enough people for projects and nobody sitting around doing nothing.

        The thing was, my time could change from day to day. I could be called up and asked to be half way across the world the next day due to a crit sit. So how the fuck am I supposed to know that weeks in advance? Even the stuff I had planned wasn't that simple: running several projects at once, fitting in with ever-changing customer needs and bailing out sales teams who'd fucked up because they didn't know the products well enough.

        I don't do that shit any more and I'm soooooo glad.

        1. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

          Re: mother-effing tool

          "and I didn't fill it in correctly a single time because i knew I was leaving"

          So it was like my CLAIM : -) Well, apart from the 'knew I was leaving' part,.. although I did eventually.

          TVA sounds like a PITA. and while a lot of my work was scheduled (Monthly security scans for required patches, quarterly for ISEC and 6 monthly for Nessus) other stuff came up, like investigating offshored fluffups, or helping fix them, or just generally noticing some teams were breaking the rules, and trying to either get the rules fixed to make sense, or the teams to understand what the rules actually meant. Some of this stuff didn't have CLAIM codes, so was shoehorned into where it fit the best. TBH I cared a little too much, and I doubt anyone else goes into the detail I did. But hey, that's no longer my issue.

  17. David Roberts

    Obligatory Dilbert

    dilbert.com/strip/1992-07-05

    Took me a while to find it. There are so many.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Joined

    Gotamortgage

    Left

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What about:

    Unimaginative

    Resource Action

    Indian

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's four words.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Facebook comments about this survey

    Comments posted on facebook.com/IBMwatching/ including the following:

    The key survey question is this: Describe the company in three words from the multicolor graphic image. For your convenience, following is a complete list of the possible answers:

    13 Green words: leader, watson, great, flexible, integrity, cloud, trust, good, cognitive, agile, professional, transformation, innovative

    3 Gray words: big, technology, global

    4 Red words: slow, bureaucratic, challenging, complex

    Responses are confidential. To take the survey, you must first log in with your W3ID. IBM promises that the only people that will see the results are the ones that have a need to know. There is an ongoing internal debate about whether or not the Committee that Chooses the next RA Recipients (CCRAR) has a need to know.

    Hint: We suggest choosing 3 green words.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Facebook comments about this survey

      No need to even reply, the hidden Bigfix and Mandiant agents running in the background will know your choices in advance anyway, gathering enough intel from mouse movements, pointer pauses on the words on the page, combined with key logging and eye movement tracking by webcam to know exactly what you are thinking and doing before you even send your supposedly anonymous response. This combined with your VPN inactivity logs will be more than enough to sack you based on your inaccurate time recording. Big Blue = Big Brother.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Facebook comments about this survey

      *DANGER* *DANGER* *DANGER* Will Robinson!

      That's *NOT* the Facebook group you think it is.

      "Watching IBM" (@alliancemember) is the real group. It has been widely speculated that the /IBMWatching group is actually a honey trap and used to catch out the unwary for the next round of RAs.

  21. Alex Read

    Outsourced, has-been

  22. midcapwarrior

    FTE's only need reply

    "You cut my contract hours so much I just don't know anymore” as options"

    I doubt contract employees are included in the survey.

    They don't much care what they think

  23. Doctor Huh?

    The picture says it all -- IBM Confidential

    That is what I remember most about my IBM days -- "IBM Confidential" plastered over just about everything, whether it really applied or not. IBM was like a kid with a new label maker.

    It was amazing how many "IBM Confidential" things escaped into the open. It was astonishing how many lunch menus or conference agendas were "IBM Confidential."

    1. Chairman of the Bored
      Thumb Up

      Re: The picture says it all -- IBM Confidential

      Try working for the USG and realizing your granny has more highly classified info in her newspaper than you have in your safe...

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm Being Moved - was one in fashion at some time.

    Immoral Boundaries Marketed

    Incredulous Bullshite Manufactured

    ...

  25. deconstructionist

    SOS

    Same old shit ..best three words

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: SOS

      Except it's not.

      Progressively worse shit.

  26. Bob Vistakin
    Facepalm

    Intense Bowel Movement

    The management -> employee process.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'd say the IBM I used to work for in the Palmisano era for is untrustworthy, money-grubbing, and sales-oriented.

    "Technical and engineering staff are necessary overhead. Technical and engineering staff are commodities. Sales is the core business."

    That is the company. Of course other IBM technical people had respect for technical people, but to IBM the company they/we were just necessary overhead. Our high opinions of each other counted for squat.

    And I see that today: Trade a 10 year product veteran in a first world country for a cheap newbie in a less developed country. A coder is a coder. One is the equivalent to another. Go for the cheapest.

  28. DagD

    Wish they didn't sell off their server business to Lecrapo.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It would have ended up much worse if they hadn't.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Irony Brings Mirth

  30. Sureo

    It's a great company to have left, which I did many years ago.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    3 words...

    TUPE --> Offshore --> Redundancy

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Two pairs of three

    Cost Of Everything

    Value of Nothing

    Worked their for four years after a TUPE. Broke my soul and belief in loyalty to a company.

    They took a role I was doing, and had me working as a project manager on 22 projects, then when I was unable to allocate sufficient time to each customer project I was told that the customer was saying they didnt get to speak to me much, but thought I was doing a good job. Was told I should have got a high 2, but due to some high performers in the group and other areas of the group it would only be a 3.

    When the inevitable call for VR (or whatever term they used) came, I heard that of the 800+ employees approximately 450 wanted out of the place. On leaving I was introduced a colleague from a faraway place who I was to handover too. I explained I had 22 projects running, he felt unable to take this on and involved his manager. I then had to break it down into 5 groups for different PMs and was told to teach them basic PM, Microsoft Project and about infrastructure.

    IBM also used to stand for I've Been Married

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Current GBS UK employee here

    Posting anonymously via the free Dutch VPN built into Opera browser. Probably won't stop Watson from finding me! Okay where to start, this supposedly optional and anonymous employee feedback 'pulse survey' is the exact opposite as I've been spammed with umpteen subtle reminders that I've not yet completed it. I always lie through my back teeth to my managers that things are fine and dandy even if they're not. The main reasoning is that they really don't care and don't need another whiny bitch to deal with, they just want 119% of your contracted hours as billable each week in CLAIM and no other dealings with you except maybe at a yearly back-patting exercise for senior management. The only reason I choose to stay is that I actually enjoy my work, clients and peers but hate the stupid travel, senior management stupid decisions and mostly the complete cluster fuck that is the massive salary and PRG band differentials between employees with the exact same job descriptions and responsibilities just with different original contractual terms. Mine are golden but many colleagues like me with over 10 years in have been absolutely shat on over last few years. Oh nearly forgot my 3 words - how about "Innovative Bullshit Managers" works for me :)

  34. ma1010
    Coat

    In the words of the PFY...

    "Is CRAP on the list?"

    1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

      Re: In the words of the PFY...

      My money’s on Dave.

      One of my favorites ;)

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Having A Laugh

  36. niksgarage

    As another ex-IBMer, I recall when IBM was the Institute of Broken Marriages, since employees were more faithful to the job than their own husbands or wives. In its heyday it was the most inspiring, rewarding and of course frustrating place to work. I'd agree with others that the Gerstner period was the last time we saw greatness - when Palmisano came on board, though we had seen many resource actions before, things got nasty. The day I left, there were so many people leaving I couldn't find anyone to hand in my badge and Thinkpad to. My manager, his manager and HIS manager were all taking the package that day. So I went down to reception, and a security guard was there, surrounded by laptop bags, with a pile of badges and car keys (from all of the company cars). I walked out of that door knowing I was leaving a once great company whose downward spiral was under way. The only thing that really astonishes me is that 12 years later it is still alive enough to make the odd headline. My three words? Consigned to History.

  37. earl grey
    Mushroom

    Three words

    Bend Ye Over

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Good Bad and the Ugly

    Let's start with the good....

    Fantastic if not best sales school called GSS.

    Most peers get along and behave like grown ups.

    A general cauldron of highly academic and smart people.

    GBS aka PWC filled with articulate and professional colleagues.

    The bad

    Inability to collaborate.

    Too many people doing the same job

    Too many conference calls

    Complex deals have little leadership

    Clients have little faith in who's managing them and who is part of their team.

    Archaic backoffice systems

    The Ugly

    Diversity declarations are merely that, declarations. I never met anyone in my UK offices that was non white and from another country.

    Women get foisted into senior roles if only they have been at IBM for as long as a prison sentence for murder and although they are on the main good leaders, they don't possess the gritty knowledge of their market

    It's definitely still a boys club. If you don't drink after hours with the boys, you won't get anywhere.

    There is no support for anyone with disabilities and if you need help you are seen as a burden and chopped in half at the hip

    They talk about mental illness for example like it's a new thing, most of which has been propagated by their culture of bullying.

    Managers are not managing but there to denigrate you and render you to feel completely inadequate.

    They train you to think strategically but expect a transactional strategy.

    There are some people who have been there for so long clearly buddies with senior management as their behaviour is nothing short of abusive, condescending, derogatory and misogynistic.

    Corporate senior managers are untouchable and are never to be spoken to or looked at like they are pharaohs

    Any hint that you're struggling and they dish out PIPs like you're passing out sweets to a kids bday party

    Any grievances that are similar I. E. Bullying are treated by colleagues and HR doesn't get involved

    There is no family feel, it's corporate America! I started with a positive attitude but this was drilled out of me. They want druids not thinkers.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The Good Bad and the Ugly

      +1 for Global Sales School - incredible training program. Do you remember your facilitator?

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    IBM

    Indians, Borking, Mainframes

    I used to work for IBM. I have never in my life witnessed such stupidity and such greed on a massive scale in my life. The office I worked in had furniture in it that literally was from the 1980's. When most companies would have the decency to throw it out because of it being out of style IBM kept it to save a buck. The computer on my desk was modern (lowest ram and cpu possible) but the monitor was a TINY 14 inch CRT affair. When a monitor broke they replaced it with another horrible CRT. They had a warehouse of outdated furniture and monitors with a limitless supply. You would think the power savings alone would convince them to swap out the monitors. Nope. They did not care that their employees were squinting and trying to work on such awful displays either.

    Their internal systems are an absolute disaster as well. To do my job I had to access at least 20 different mainframes none of which had any connectivity to one another. The software that did have GUI access was so terrible and coded so badly by foreigners that we had to use winbatch macros to get anything done. Even with the macros it took a painful amount of time to do anything with these systems.

    And then there was the big brother aspect. They timed our bathroom breaks down to the minute with managers hovering constantly requiring constant status updates and endless meetings. Literally if you were 1 minute late they had an absolute cow about it. If there was a break down in communication between your task master (manager) and an employee the employee was always blamed and thrown under the bus. I was on a call with a customer who was trying to get services they did not pay for at no charge. When they threw a tantrum and called sales and made threats I got thrown under the bus for not giving them free stuff I would have been fired for giving them. I actually did not get fired for this but going through this exercise more than one time I realized I had too much self respect to keep working for them. I left for a startup.

    Working for IBM was like being in jail. The oppressive beige cube farm with people dressed in business casual clothing might as well have been concrete cell walls and orange jumpsuits. I mean at least the inmates in jail have the decency to use hand soap when they bend you over to take advantage of you. IBM managers did not.

    Oh. And then there were the Indians. If you made the mistake of trying to find an Indians name in the Lotus notes address book it would crash your machine. The in.ibm.com domain was WAY larger than the us.ibm.com domain. Of course when you finally tracked down your Indian counterparts information by searching your e-mail (and waiting 20 minutes for your computer to find it) you could not understand a word they were saying. For the record. I don't care where you are from. As long as you have basic sense and communication skills. Both lacking in the employees in India that IBM employs.

    The really sad thing is that so many customers are loyal to these people. Companies like Walmart eat up their crap hardware like it was going out of style. If IBM went out of business tomorrow it would be a public service for the whole world. The only companies that buy their hardware and software are equally evil and aggressive with their customers and employees. Heck IBM sold mainframes to the Nazi's after all. Why change now?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: IBM

      "...but the monitor was a TINY 14 inch CRT affair. When a monitor broke they replaced it with another horrible CRT... ...did not care that their employees were squinting and trying to work on such awful displays either." IBMifact rating: Probably Bollocks.

      Their internal systems are an absolute disaster as well. To do my job I had to access at least 20 different mainframes none of which had any connectivity to one another. IBMifact rating: Probably Bollocks.

      "And then there was the big brother aspect. They timed our bathroom breaks down to the minute with managers hovering constantly requiring constant status updates and endless meetings. Literally if you were 1 minute late they had an absolute cow about it." IBMifact rating: PANTS ON FIRE!!!

      "Companies like Walmart eat up their crap hardware like it was going out of style." IBMifact rating: Bollocks. IBM hardware wasn't and isn't crap. Expensive as hell, sure - but not crap.

      "The only companies that buy their hardware and software are equally evil and aggressive with their customers and employees." IBMifact rating: Bollocks.

      "Heck IBM sold mainframes to the Nazi's after all. Why change now?" IBMifact rating: PANTS ON FIRE!!!

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't walk, run!

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The execs have lost touch with the base

    "Indians Best Manure"

    Ok, to be fair, if IBM trains and invests in our indian colleagues propperly, they are acually quite good. But then they are also not that much cheaper than engineers anywhere in the world. IBMs strategy in India (mostly) isn't to a acquire rare top skill but to retain cheap underpaid resources for a short period of time.

    "Smoke and Mirrors"

    With regard to the global pulse survey: IBM does not intend to use this tool to improve the situation for its employees or clients. The survey only serves as a fine-grained indicator of hot spots. You don't want the mood to rise to the boiling point in a team that has to deliver a critical asset a year from now ... as has happened with hardware teams that basically completely left the company leaving the project in the rain. Only where there is an indication of pending desaster IBM might intervene. Besides of that, its rather the opposite. If teams that are not deamed critical to IBMs strategic initiatives are "too happy" this is an indicator that these teams are overstaffed. Some think this is the main goal of the survey. If the mood is sill not "bad enough" within a team, they obviously still have "fat" left that needs to be cut away. So, you cant win by either answering the survey in a critical way, because you might be identified and be the next to be RAed. You also better dont fake an "I love IBM" or, if all of you team do that, IBM identifies your team as overstaffed. Most people i know simply stopped to do the survey. And from the number of reminders we get to participate, most IBMers stopped to care.

  42. Screw to Big Blue

    IBM in Three Words! = Investors Being Mugged!

    IBM = Investors Being Mugged!

    About CLOUD and growing revenues, when all that Ginni Rometty and her board are doing is fudging the Balance Sheet by moving traditional software and appliances under the Cloud heading - even when these are installed on customer premises. e.g. Analytics software, Datapower and Netezza appliances.

    If it does not run in an IBM owned or collocated multi-tenancy data centre then it is not Cloud!

    IBM customer outsourced DC's owned and/or managed by IBM or an IBM partner is not Cloud!

  43. Screw to Big Blue

    I've Been Made REDUNDANT

    I've Been Mugged

    I'm Bloody Mad (with IBM Management lies)

    I'm a Bloody Mug

    I've Been Marked Down

    I've Been Married

    I've Been Moved (Relocated or collocated)

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