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Highlights—August 1, 2015

• Alliance@IBM:

  The Disintegration of Employment in IBM. Excerpts: Last week an unknown number of IBM workers were notified they would lose their jobs. The common thread in the reports was that their work was being moved to another country. In the mid 1980’s, the number of IBM employees in the United States was 230,000. Now it is 71,000, and the future of employment growth in the US is bleak.

  In a relentless, ill conceived drive to cut cost and to increase earnings per share, IBM executive management put this once great company on a path of ruin. Business units were sold off and in the case of chip manufacturing IBM even paid a company to take that segment. Job cuts and force outs have been the order of the day. Off shoring of work and the bringing in of foreign workers on guest worker visas have been a slap to the face of hard working loyal US employees who have lost their jobs to this insidious business model. Employees of companies IBM bought face a bleak future as they transition into IBM and then their work gets moved to another country.

  IBM in the 21st century is a shadow of a once great company. It is now a company selling a myth of greatness.

  This didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t go unnoticed by many IBM employees or the Alliance. It did go unnoticed by many in the country. The myth of IBM as a great and successful company lived on. But now that facade is cracking.

  After 13 straight quarters of dismal revenue, questions are being raised about the company leadership. Unfortunately concerns weren’t raised when IBM embarked on this path and the “Roadmaps”. All is fine and good when the stock price is up and dividends are paid off. Nobody cared about the workers losing their jobs or the damage done to their families and communities.

  But with the latest job cuts in July and the push to move more work out of the US, it has to be asked: what is the future for IBM US employees?

  Here are some comments from IBM workers caught in the latest job cut...

• Glassdoor IBM reviews. Selected reviews follow:

  • “Manager”

    Former Employee — Anonymous Employee. Pros: Lots of professional training provided. Many responsibilities and learning experiences. Cons: Expect to work hard — may not have life balance you want.

  • “Once a Great place to work”

    Former Employee — Controller/Solution Financial Manager in Armonk, NY. I worked at IBM (more than 8 years). Pros: Smart people, prestigious name brand recognition. Exposure to a wide variety of industries. Opportunity to grow and continue to learn. Cons: IBM stopped investing in their North American talent pool and became solely driven by financial results. Felt stifling as a decision maker, and lacked the ability to "do the right thing" for the customer and IBM. I'm sure it was part of the cycle and they will figure it out, but it became such a frustration that I no longer enjoyed working there.

  • “Constant Layoffs”

    Current Employee — IT Specialist. I have been working at IBM full-time (more than 10 years).

    Pros: Flexible work from home arrangement. No micromanagement. Managers expect you to take initiative and base your ratings on volunteering for projects.

    Cons: Systems administrators/support team are low on the totem pole and don't get much respect. Don't expect raises, even when you've achieved your commitments. Layoffs are a common occurrence. Contractors are also expected to take furloughs when layoffs occur, so that fewer people are left to do the work. You will work many hours on weekends.

    Advice to Management: Respect the employees more and don't layoff employees in the US to hire more offshore workers.

  • “IBM Philippines Graduate Hire — Advance Programming Specialist”

    Former Employee — IT Specialist in Quezon City, National Capital Region (Philippines).

    Pros: Good training. BIG FISH company.

    Cons:

    • A very low wage.
    • Growth level at its lowest
    • Often times, the training that you are specializing from them has no relationship to the project you will work to.
    • Often times, a project candidate is measured by random system generator meaning it's not measured based on talents.
    • There are no overtime pays even though counterparts wants you to work overtime
    • Promotion when you last 1 year in the project, but if you're rolled off from the project (even though the project is just cost-cutting or have minor reasons) the time gap for your promotion will be reset. It means if you are rolled off in the project after 364 or less days, then the promotion duration will be reset.
    • Vacation leaves are earned. You cannot have leaves probably on January-March because you have to earn it first.
    • Holiday offsets is a joke. Because first you have to use it within the next quarter otherwise it would be a waste. Second, if you have many holiday offsets, you cannot use it within the next quarter because there are some project requirements that you have to complete a minimum working hours per week or per quarter so for example, you have to work 40 hours/week, 8 hours per day, then you had one holiday vacation leave on that week, so you have to work 10 hours/day on that week just to cope up your vacation leave which is very FRUSTRATING.

    Advice to Management: Treat every employee equally as the IBM logo means.

  • “Software Engineer”

    Former Employee — Software Engineer in White Plains, NY. Pros: Stable job, even in terrible years. Cons: Giant elephant is not vibrant. People here are using some ancient software strange to externals, Lotus 1-2-3, for example. Advice to Management: I don't think managers can change much about the culture but executives need to do more. They shall have visions and bring more vibration to work force.

  • “My opinion”

    Former Employee — Deskside Support Representative in Joliet, IL. I worked at IBM (more than 8 years). Pros: Great benefits, good work/life balance. Cons: Cut, cut and cut until there's nothing left. Advice to Management: Be more creative with solutions instead of just laying off employees. You are earning big bucks for a reason.

  • “Client Tech Professional”

    Current Employee — CTP in Fresno, CA. I have been working at IBM full-time (more than 10 years).

    Pros: You can learn a brand portfolio; most have more than one product, which makes for great resume line items when you leave. The people you work with are great and will help you out when they can, but like most organizations, there is more work than hours. The benefits are decent.

    Cons: No pay raises for years, and archaic evaluation system where management hands down the ratings and your manager gets to figure out how to fit everyone into what upper management sent down. There is always failed to meet rating they have to give, and will tell you someone has to get a low rating, they have to give out their allotment, so managers play the favorites. There is little to no movement upwards, and it is a "who you know, not what you know" system. Most have not have a pay increase since the economy dumped in 2008, so don't get your hopes up, and work-life is more work; hope you can find a life in the hour or two we let you have on the weekend.

    Advice to Management: Give a pay raise or two. The good folks leave for better pay. Think of enticing managers to move to new positions so they don't play favorites. The PBC System is a joke; let managers decide what ratings to give. Don't hand them the numbers and tell them to place folks in them. While it looks like the company may still be floundering, not believing in your employees or valuing their opinions will put this place in the grave.

  • “Once was great but now struggles”

    Former Employee — Senior Manager in Melbourne (Australia).

    Pros: Had a fantastic run in IBM because career choices were there. Can always move around within the company. People mostly were of high calibre but deadwoods were there too. Fantastic process. While can be overbearing at times, it made sure everything were done properly

    Cons: Too slow to react to market change. CAMSS had been in the market for several years before IBM decided to enter it. IBM was a market leader, innovator. Now it contends to be a follower (the late move into CAMSS is a prime example). It completely lost its innovation leadership and I fear the end is close ala Nokia. Career opportunities are now limited to presales and sales roles. Not a lot of other roles left.

    Advice to Management: Execs should not only know what the current technologies are but also what the future technologies should be. Have more entrepreneurial Tech leaders run this company rather than promoting people from Sales with no tech knowledge.

  • “Customer Relationship Representative”

    Former Employee — Anonymous Employee. Pros: Co-workers are the people to work with. Cons: Stress level is high because work load is unimaginable. Advice to Management: Workers are real people that deserve respect and to be rewarded monetarily for their efforts.

  • “Account Executive”

    Current Employee — Anonymous Employee.

    Pros: Outstanding company. Great people. Excellent training. Rich history. Global brand with tons of product, and in the process of re-inventing itself (again) to capitalize on emerging trends toward cloud analytics mobile social and security (CAMMS).

    Cons: Very large global company, with tons of different products/services. Changing strategy/direction always takes time, but it's even harder with a company this big/complex, especially when the world continues to evolve even as you make the changes. Management has its hands full.

    Advice to Management: You have the right plan, but try to go forward with everything you are doing even faster.

  • “A little bit slow”

    Current Employee — Anonymous Employee in Cairo (Egypt).

    Pros:

    • Overall nice company to work for.
    • Could potentially have a good pay depending on the department and which band you're in.
    • A lot of tools making it possible to interact and network with IBMers all over the world
    • A CV booster

    Cons:

    • Managers are absolute dinosaurs that like to micro manage.
    • Hard to move up the ladder
    • Little opportunity to move around to other more exciting roles and projects as a support engineer.
    • A lot of bureaucracy
    • The HQ building at Pyramids heights is absolutely hideous. It is the most gloomy and depressing place to work in.
    • Constantly cutting costs at IBM making it harder each year to receive training.

    Advice to Management: Please stop worrying about how good you look and put a little bit more effort in developing the employees under you.

  • “IT Team Lead”

    Current Employee — Computer and Information Systems Manager in Armonk, NY. I have been working at IBM full-time (more than a year). Pros: IBM is a good company with lots of opportunities for growth. Good work-life balance and opportunities to relocated. Cons: Highly focused on numbers. Often losing sight of good customer services.

  • “Technical Operations Leader”

    Current Employee — Technical Team Lead in Elgin, IL. I have been working at IBM full-time (more than 10 years).

    Pros: IBM offers a great deal of education in a shorter period of time than many companies. They are a process-driven firm which helps individuals become familiar with their job role more quickly. They have moved to a pool environment in many areas which provides structure to each of the technical teams.

    Cons: The pool environment tends to limit exposure to other areas of technical interests. This also reduces the ability to focus on any given account or segment of the business causing customer dissatisfaction. The processes documented do not address much more than the most common courses of action which places some additional limitations on staff functionality.

    Advice to Management: Management has taken a more limiting view in technical services as they reduce the skills required to perform the work and become more reliant on documented processes. They further attempt to co-locate their staff in lower wage areas where technical skills are lower. The reduction in skills in their pool environments places a higher workload on their Subject Matter Experts which are becoming a rare breed in the company. The overall customer satisfaction suffers as a result of this model.

  • “IBM lost of values”

    Former Employee — Project Manager in Atlanta, GA. Pros: Large company, name recognition, some work from home work/life balance benefits, good health insurance regardless of the constant increases. Cons: Too bureaucratic due to the immense size and the company has lost touch with employees treating them openly as resources/numbers vs. actual valued, associates. Advice to Management: Change management is needed here in North America to heighten morale and re-introduce the faith that the VPs actually care about the associates...NOT GLOBALLY, but here in the US and Canada.

  • “Must leave to advance”

    Current Employee — Anonymous Employee. I have been working at IBM full-time (more than 5 years). Pros: The company is working to keep up with industry trends for employee benefits; i.e. they recently increased maternity leave from 6 to 12 weeks. Cons: They have a reputation of having high salary gaps between employees with more experience and stronger backgrounds and new hires who have no experience. Advice to Management" Keep your employees happy first, and your company will succeed.

  • “Availability Manager”

    Current Employee — Availability Manager in Sandy Springs, GA I have been working at IBM (More than 10 years).

    Pros: Great opportunities, to learn different platforms, services, offerings.

    Cons: No Management leadership, direction, involvement. Management never learns from mistakes; you can reinvent the wheel every day. Management cries wolf too many times, they do not know how to manage the customer. Every employee is on death row waiting for the call to come in that you are no longer needed.

    Advice to Management: Listen to your employees. Learn from your mistakes. Manage your customer and quit blaming others when you should be pointing to yourself.

  • “IBM Corp”

    Current Employee — Anonymous Employee. Pros: Big corporation with opportunities, but only if within areas deemed important at the time. Cons: Way too much internal activities that get in the way of doing your job. History of bi-annual resource actions to reduce head count and jobs.

  • “Once a great company, not so much any more"

    Former Employee — Anonymous Employee. Pros: The people are IBM's greatest assets. Highly skilled and loyal. Cons: Long hours, demanding schedules, low pay. They ship many jobs overseas to low cost providers. Constant cost cutting and job layoffs. Advice to Management: Don't worry so much about keeping share holders fat and happy. Start investing in employees instead of cutting to the bone.

  • “IBM GBS UK”

    Current Employee — GBS Programmer Manager in London, England (UK). Pros: Quality customers and engagements Reasonably clear career path. Fairly good processes. Cons: Whoever you are you are just a small cog in a very large gearbox. Expense payments process is awful and designed to take as long as possible to refund employees. Complex matrix management means often many people chasing same thing. Advice to Management: Make the expense process fairer, quicker and simpler. The current policy is shameful for such a large organisation.

  • “Management has stopped caring for their employees.”

    Current Employee — Service Desk Analyst in Ridgeley, WV.

    Pros: The job has very flexible hours. Decent pay. Work from home options. Decent benefits. A nice quiet atmosphere (most days). Room for promotion (if you are a favorite to management. If not get comfy where you're at.)

    Cons: Don't care about their employee opinions. One manager is rude to most employees. Clear signs of favoritism. Work through lunch on busy days + mandatory hour of over time. They are understaffed most of the time and extremely busy most everyday.

    Advice to Management: Please go back to the service desk attitude. Care about your employees. Don't turn it into an uncaring dictatorship.

  • “Advisory IT Specialist”

    Current Employee — Advisory IT Specialist in Wrocław (Poland). I have been working at IBM (less than a year). Pros: Stability. Benefit system. Good work conditions. And a lot of good people around you. Cons: Almost impossible to grow up as specialist. Only one way to review your salary is to be re-employed after leaving the company. Advice to Management: Think about annual salary review. Do something to encourage good employees inside the company.

  • “Advisory Engineer”

    Former Employee — Anonymous Employee in Fishkill, NY. Pros: Advanced technology leader in the semiconductor field. Cons: Company values are just something to decorate the hallway walls.

  • “A Sweat Shop With Lots of Brain Power”

    Former Employee — Manager in Somers, NY. I worked at IBM (more than 5 years).

    Pros: Provides an opportunity to work with some extremely bright people. Forces you to look at issues from every angle (sometimes to a fault), but is invaluable experience for career growth. A great place to learn and then move on so you can advance in your career both level wise and $$$ wise.

    Cons: No life balance at all. Work, work, work at all hours, since the organization has most of its employees outside of the US you need to be available at all hours. Employee morale is horrible (at least in the US) and the focus is always on costs...ALWAYS. Those at the top are very well paid, with lots of incentive; however, the workhorses are not as well rewarded with pay and other types of remuneration. Obviously, I'm not a long term fan.

    Advice to Management: Treat your employees with dignity and respect. Remember that without the workhorses, IBM would not function like the machine that it is.

  • “GTS — Operations Support”

    Current Employee — Anonymous Employee in Phoenix, AZ. Pros: Looks great on a resume, people are really impressed, if they only knew. Education is great. Benefits are great. Cons: They are an old company with a lot of old management. People in US are being laid off every quarter. Advice to Management: Cut management in half. Cut anyone who isn't proficient in Google, YouTube and Facebook. If you can't use those three you have no business being in the tech business in 2015. Cut anyone who still thinks sarcasm, yelling and screaming is the right kind of people management.

  • “Nice company to work short term, but don't expect to grow roots.”

    Current Employee — Anonymous Employee in Denver, CO I have been working at IBM (More than 10 years)

    Pros: Depending on the job, working remotely from home can be a nice perk, although some divisions are beginning to change back to seated positions. Peers and management are generally professional. Employees are more mature and experienced, which could be a pro or a con, depending on your preferences.

    Cons: If you want to build up your resume, not a bad place for a couple of years. If you want to grow with a company, this company is not for you. IBM won't hesitate to offshore, outsource or divest your job in a heartbeat, maybe replace you with an H1b.

    The company has become rudderless and the CEO has led the company to 13 straight bad quarters; it is living off of its past reputation and the IBM stock has dropped like a rock. Only about 82K US employees left and dropping about 5-10% every year. Most jobs now are in India, Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico, Eastern Europe, etc. Company is top heavy and has too many middle managers. HR is from another planet, you can expect tons of propaganda.

    Advice to Management: Advise your employees on getting out before the battleship sinks.

  • “Outsourced from Pepsi and it's been downhill ever since”

    Current Employee — Financial Analyst in Winston-Salem, NC. I have been working at IBM full-time (more than a year).

    Pros: IBM is a good name to put on your resume. Nearly unlimited sick days and good vacation/floating holiday package. Flex scheduling. Ability to work from home part time as long as your accounts are maintained.

    Cons: High turnover, little to no employee appreciation, bad pay, people who were with Pepsi for years are now racing to get out the door, have trouble replacing people as fast as they're leaving so that puts more workload on the employees that are left and even though you may have one person doing two peoples' job, getting overtime is like pulling teeth, mediocre training for new hires (who are all temps, they never hire on with IBM), lack of communication around the office (people who have been with Pepsi and IBM since the beginning are leaving and leadership doesn't even communicate this to the teams, it's all hush hush like people disappear into thin air), this list could go on and on.

    Advice to Management: Appreciate the employees who stuck with you after the Pepsico/IBM outsourcing even after that terrible 10% pay cut — you're going to need their knowledge if you want to be successful. Make people want to stay long term instead of offering no incentives to stay and replacing full time employees that leave with temporary contractors. Focus more on the positives that people do instead of the constant drone of emails stating how terrible we're doing — if you reward the positives you're going to see a heck of a lot more of them! Management needs a complete makeover — most supervisors and managers you only see when you're doing something wrong or they want you to do more.

  • “IBM Solutions Architect”

    Former Employee — Anonymous Employee. I worked at IBM (more than 10 years). Pros: Excellent people, highly skilled and motivated. You'll find yourself challenged here and if you like constantly learning about new technology, this is a great place. Cons: Management lacks flexibility and seldom has time to guide your career goals within the company. Also, focus is only on a quarterly basis. Advice to Management: If you foster advancement within the ranks, you'll have more satisfied workforce and people motivated to make their career with IBM.

  • “Delivery project executive”

    Former Employee — Anonymous Employee in Long Valley, NJ. I worked at IBM full-time (more than 10 years). Pros: Ability to work remotely a plus. Cons: Management more interested in cutting costs to maximize profits at expense of service being delivered. I've seen vicious cycles where SLAs are missed, so to counteract the penalties, staff is cut, which further exacerbates the inability to meet the SLAs. Advice to Management: Listen to the troops at the front line with customers, not the stock market.

  • “Director Marketing Communications”

    Current Employee — Director in New York, NY. I have been working at IBM full-time (more than 10 years). Pros: The people and the ability to trade on the brand IBM. Cons: Latent old technology, red tape and bureaucracy, lack of care of employees. Advice to Management: Look after your greatest asset — people. Remove CEO Ginni Rometty.

  • “The best and worst of times”

    Former Employee — Anonymous Employee. Pros: Awesome peer related employees to work with and interesting projects. Cons: Management politics and procedures often get in the way of productivity. Advice to Management: Get rid of PBCs and understand the work performed by your employee.

  • “Finance manger-client location”

    Current Employee — Finance Second Line Manager in Winston-Salem, NC. I have been working at IBM full-time (more than 5 years). Pros: Global company with lots of opportunities to work on global assignments. Great company to have on your resume. Cons: Upper management has shared several times that the only reason we are located in the U.S. is because the client mandated it. They would send this work off-shore if they could. Doesn't make you feel valued as an employee. They don't pay for the amount of work we have. Advice to Management: You need to pay for the level of talent you expect. When you give people more work, they need are increase to incent them to take on that challenge.

  • “Good for most”

    Current Employee — Performance Test Lead in Washington, DC. I have been working at IBM full-time (more than a year). Pros: Flexible work schedules, great benefits, good opportunities to learn new things and grow. Cons: Bureaucratic environment, not much leeway on vacation times, hard to get promoted unless you're in sales.

  • “Big Blue needs overhaul”

    Former Employee — IT Specialist in New York, NY/ I worked at IBM full-time (more than 10 years). Pros: Telecommuting, latitude to work independently, mostly free from micro-management. Cons: Salary not competitive. Raises are rare. Too many managers and VPs and most don't have a clue. PBC review process is unfair and mostly subjective. Promotions are rare. Constant threat of layoffs. Advice to Management: Bring salaries in line with market. Trash PBC process. Reduce management levels.

  • “Managing Consultant”

    Former Employee — Anonymous Employee. Pros: GBS — Excellent brand recognition, lot of smart people on team. Commitment to delivery of successful projects. Leverages relationship with software group when it comes to IBM products. Cons: Have to work on projects in other verticals some times, due to billing and utilization requirements. Sometimes the sales cycle is long. Advice to Management: Keep doing what you are doing, but invest more in people training, and further solidify the working relationship between SWG & GBS.
• Alliance for Retired Americans Friday Alert. This week's topics include:
  • In Honor of Medicare’s 50th Anniversary, Alliance Members Hold Celebrations Nationwide
  • Alliance Joins Rep. Becerra to Strengthen Social Security’s Disability Trust Fund
  • Rep. Honda Acts to More Accurately Calculate Social Security Cost of Living Adjustments
  • Videos from 2015 Legislative Conference Online
  • Medicare Turns 50: President Obama Celebrates Medicare’s Anniversary

  Download a PDF version.