Working For IBM
It’s been about a month since I officially joined the IBM workforce. There’s been a lot of Blue (brain) washing going on where they tell you how great the company is, give you some tips on getting ahead, and give you an overall feel good factor about being one of the 350,000 people globally, lucky enough to become an IBM drone. But being an IBMer does have its perks (you can just sense the sarcasm coming).
- That Dream Car… -
For instance, those who are a year into their employment get a car subsidy where IBM pays for half the interest (up to 6%) for the first three years for a loan of up to RM30,000. With the current interest rates, that comes up to roughly RM300 annually (or RM25 monthly) in interest subsidy (WOW!). You won’t be getting that dream car anytime soon.
- Paper Qualifications (make your own) -
On the plus side, education and training is more or less covered. There’s plenty of resources to be had in the IBM Intranet, including free 24/7 access to e-books, learning courses, and online training. To give you an idea on the sheer magnitude of courses available, the training course overview PDF document weighs in at 7MB! Just wading through that is a task on its own. Further education is also a viable pursuit. IBM will reimburse the education fee for courses/training/degree upon the candidate successfully passing the course. The catch being that you have to pay for the course first and if you fail, you get nothing back. Did I mention that the reimbursement is subject to approval?
Come to think of it, everything is subject to approval. The approval mechanism is mostly there to protect the company. It’s kinda sad that we can’t install Skype on the IBM Thinkpad they provided. Lucky for me I have another machine at home. Otherwise, it would cost a bomb for my parents and I to call my sister and brother-in-law in Australia.
Anyway, life and work goes on. I think this Dilbert strip about sums it up…
- Dilbert: Working for IBM -
But then again, that about sums up working life in general…
July 15th, 2007 at 1:23 am
Yep, it does. I worked 8 years for IBM, leaving last year. That was one of the smartest decisions of my life. I only wish I had not bought into that IBM nonsense that they are the best IT company in the world (and therefore you are the best IT professional due to the mere fact of working for IBM) and would have left earlier. IBM is full of people who have no business whatsoever in IT. Quite often they are called “managers” at IBM, and this is tragic. As a general observation - if you do not know the difference between source code and compiled machine code - you have a bright future at IBM as a manager.
I can go on several pages of why working for IBM is not the best choice. But mainly it comes down to what can be expressed in very simple terms - “TOO MUCH BS”. And BS does not stand for Bachelor of Science.
Suffice to say that having left IBM, I finally make what really is a “market rate” salary for Software Developer of my experience and education. Given my historical salary increases at IBM ( that barely covered inflation rate) it would have taken me another 9 years.
gbyeow: Hmm… That doesn’t sound very promising…