What I like about my work place

IBM offers a very flexible working environment. In most cases, no one will ask you what time you come or go from office. Neither the logs of the swipe card will be analyzed to take some action against you in normal circumstances. In special circumstances, the company can even allow you to work from home. No blocking of internet or phones . All in all, you are "not" working in a jail. It has a wealth of knowledge that can be explored in its intranet only if one takes an initiative. The topics range from all technology areas, sales and marketing methodologies to economics of IT industry.

Sometimes you feel that there are too many processes to follow. The company is so huge that it is a challenge to make people aware of existing processes. I have often seen it happening that sometimes small groups within IBM try to develop their own processes, often unaware that such a best practice already exists and can be leveraged. Ofcourses, Lou Grestner (former CEO of IBM) summarizes that Elephants can dance. However, its an obvious choice if the elephant is in danger of extinction. Lou Grestner must have made a mammoth effort to turn around IBM from when it was in dire straits. However, probably because of the sheer size of the company, it is often not easy to implement changes to a process. Just as an example, if your project requires to acquire hardware from IBM, the acquisition will take its own sweet time no matter what level you escalate the matter to.