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• "Priming the Pump" by "Dose of Reality". Excerpts: At the band 6 - 9 levels, there is no funnel issue, but there are a few things that serve to keep promotions at a minimum.
  • Development. The rate at which staff develop can be significantly impacted by the presence or absence of an actively supported skill/career development plan. We have none. Project assignment decisions are made based strictly on need. The utilization targets do not allow the luxury of waiting for the right project to come along. There is no action plan or budget for soft or hard skill gap closure. Staff are expected to self-teach, and in many cases their superiors are only concerned about project needs, and don't have the mentoring skills or any interest in development for development sake
  • Motivation. The pace at which staff are able to develop, is strongly correlated to the amount of effort that they put into project work, practice development, and self-improvement. If there are no tangible, credible rewards, effort will be mediocre. The possibility of a promotion in three years is not sufficient motivation to elicit extraordinary effort. It takes a combination of short and long term rewards to really charge someone up. After one or two pay cycles of seeing leeches and coasters getting the same evaluation, raise and bonus as you do, any initial interest in excelling just disappears
  • Vesting. We don’t want anyone to be here long enough to vest. The whole system is set up to chew you up and spit you out in 3 – 4 years. As a result, the thresholds for promotion are set too high. We don’t want to grow superstars – we prefer to hire them externally.
  • Specialization. We ride whatever wave we see until it crests and crashes. We staff up with the skills du jour, exploit them as long as we can, and discard them when they are no longer relevant. It is planned obsolescence. We provide very few opportunities for staff to broaden their skill sets.
  • Commodity Focus. In order for someone to move up from band 8, you need to have sales skills. It is really hard to develop them, when all of your project work is limited to mundane service delivery. In order to sell, you need to be able to translate a client business problem into a marketable value proposition. It is like trying to convert an automobile assembly line production worker into a district salesman. Customers aren’t going to want to hear about the quality metrics on chassis assembly – they want to know how well the car is going to perform for them.
  There is no reason why we should have to continue to hire so many band 7 - 9 from the outside. There are lots of potentially qualified candidates on the inside. We just don't do anything to help them succeed.
• "The Offshore Option" by "Dose of reality". Full excerpt: I hear that the yet-to-be-hired lead partner has already been blamed for the weakness in the pipeline and was written up for it. In response, he said "But I haven't been hired yet". HR then put an addendum in his file - "Not a team player", "Resists authority". "On notice" Rumor has it that they are going to replace his position with 10 H1 Visa holders from India, supported by an offshore team of 100 telemarketers. The hiring manager said "It's pretty much a wash on a cost basis, and at least we know exactly what we are getting with the Indians".
  Telemarketing scripts have been leaked out:
  TM: “Hello my name is Sanjeev Singh, may I have your name and ID number please?”
  Target: “I’m sorry – who is it you wish to speak with?”
  TM: “I have an emerging market that I wish to sell to you. Can I please tell you about it?”
  Target: “I don’t know what you are talking about”
  TM: “OK sir, I would be happy to help you with that. May I put you on hold for a minute?”
  TM: “Do you mind if I take control of your PC for a minute? Now go to start, run…..”
  Target: “Who do you work for?”
  TM: “I work for IBM”
  Target: “Oh – that explains everything!” (click)
  TM: …Note to self: Very promising lead…follow-up with Target in one week…Rude Americans!!
• "Recommendation" by "Dose of reality". Excerpts: At IBM, Operations and Strategy really is a misnomer for the kind of work that we do. The mission of BCS in general is to infiltrate clients with "meat and potatoes" diagnostic work, implement packaged technical solutions, and steer clients toward IBM outsourcing services, where all the big money is made. There is little in the way of clinical management consulting or professional integrity. Thought leadership is nonexistent, and most of the consultants morph into technical resources. Most of the industry and process/solutions capabilities that were acquired from PwC have long since walked out the door due to the IBM HR and compensation policies. Highlights of these policies include:
  • Across the board salary cuts two years running
  • Raises in the 0 – 3% range with most closer to 0
  • Bonuses TARGETS at 10 – 15%, but never paid out since they are contingent on practices meeting their overall profit targets which are always inflated well beyond what is realistically achievable. But somehow, the front office always gets their bonuses, since they always sandbag their targets
  • Promotions are rare, and the thresholds are set artificially high so as to keep staff running on a treadmill in futile hopes of getting one. Then again, there is no material bump in salary with a change in title
  • Utilization targets (the % of your working capacity that you are expected to be chargeable to a client) are set so high so as to leave no time for you to be trained, take vacation, do practice development, administrative tasks etc.
  • A philosophy of putting you on any project where we may need you, regardless of career fit or geographic location
  • Restrictive travel policies that mean you may have long layovers, multiple connections and cheap hotels.
  • A bureaucracy that would put the government to shame.
  • Oversold projects that put undue stress on staff. Many project managers that can do nothing more than blame staff for failure.
• "Let's get clear on the bands" by "wonderaboutibm". Full excerpt: Hey folks, wake up and smell the coffee. The IBM bands are VERY wide in salary range and VERY MUCH overlap. (A few years ago the range for b9 was something like 50K to 150K.) Many b6s will make more than many b7s. However, remember that IBM basically uses the Hays salary admin concept of keeping everybody at or below the band salary midpoint. So from the salary raise perspective, whatever pathetic raise is given will go to the b7 under the b7 midpoint rather than to the b6 over b6 midpoint, even if the b7 were to make more in the first place. If the b6 and b7 have the same salary, better to be a b7.
  This salary admin is also the reason for salary compression. Those that get raises are below the midpoint and the raise pushes them to the midpoint. Those at the midpoint get no raise, UNLESS they get the walk-on-water "1" rating, in which case their raise pushes them that much more over the midpoint and therefore no future raises unless they continue to walk on water. (Normally that does not happen.) So you can get a "promotion" (by definition a band jump) and still not much of any reward for it. What a system.

• Alliance@IBM: Attention IBM employees: IBM is blocking e-mail to and from the Alliance@IBM e-mail address endicottalliance@stny.rr.com from inside the company. Please send your job cut information and other correspondence from your home e-mail. You can also contact us the following ways: Phone 607 658 9285 or Fax 607 658 9283.
• On Monday, November 21, the City Council in Burlington, Vermont passed an outsourcing ordinance with a unanimous vote of the 11 City Councilors in attendance. The stated policy of the ordinance reads "It is the policy of the City of Burlington to let service contracts to contractors, subcontractors and vendors who perform work in the United States". The City has taken a significant move to support working people by acknowledging that public funds should not be used to pay for public services that will be performed by workers outside the country unless no alternative is available. The ordinance is the end result of a concerted effort on the part of Vermont Alliance@IBM activists, the Champlain Valley Central Labor Council, the Vermont State AFL-CIO and City Councilor Philip Fiermonte, who works as a key aid to Congressman Bernie Sanders.
• From the Visitor's comment page and the Job Cuts Status & Comments page.
  • Comment 11/19/05: Those planning to retire at the end of the year need to redo their Netbenefits retirement calculations. The interest rate used for retiring after November 2005 are the rates for 2006. In my case it reduced some of the payoff amounts. Most highly impacted was the combination "Lump Sum + Annuity". The lump sum went up about 8 percent, but the annuity portion dropped over 30 percent. The other standard payments increased for the initial payment amounts, but decreased for the beneficiaries or the payment after income averaging versus the same numbers for retiring at the end of November. These changes were much less, but did exist. Remember, that you cannot retire in November, after December has arrived. *** I had received the so called "official package" from the IBM HR - Retirement Group and only found out when I ran the calculations myself the week of 11/18. It was a shocker, but nobody seemed to give a hoot, until I told them because of the changes in calculated values, I was retiring the end of November. -Anonymous-
  • Comment 11/20/05: Bands have no meaning in IBM. I have seen people joining IBM at band 8 were lowered to band 7 after 8 years of IBM experience! This really sucks as now they are at the top of their band and get NO pay increases. Another reason for management to keep any pay hikes away. This is an easy way to alienate hard working sincere employees. And guess, what it does to the employee morale. Any one seen or heard this happening before??-Anonymous-
  • Comment 11/21/05: I’ve, now, been laid off under EACH of the three Bush administrations! The third of which has been by IBM.
    The first time was by Martin Marietta, in Denver, CO, in 1991, right before Desert Storm, due to outsourcing to Arthur Anderson, who, in turn, sent the systems to the Philippines – and, by the way, Ronald Reagan, towards the end of his presidency, walked within yards of my desk, while we I/T personnel hammered the nails into our coffin by building the bridges to Arthur Anderson’s software. What he saw that day were two large, open, rooms devoid of cubicles with row after row of khaki green chairs and military style desks with mice and cords running around the room!
    The second time I was laid off was by a software development company doing prescription claims processing, here in Kansas City, in 2002. They put in management who had been mainframe people working on those systems, and told them they wouldn’t have to learn any of this new Java/Web development, as contractors would be hired – that left someone like me, with many years of mainframe experience, and taking classes, at night, in web development – with straight A’s! – totally, out in the cold, because I didn’t have the years and years of experience with those particular systems to have developed an understanding of the business!
    I was rebadged from Sprint to IBM a year ago, and told that eight hundred positions - not applications - but positions would be going overseas within a year's time. Well, the year is over, and I was part of the start of layoffs in Sept., but I got a short reprieve by being sent to their AT&T account in a very large building, complete with a large cafeteria and four-story car garage - that is now almost devoid of people! (I was told that the last of the software developers had been laid off last spring.) I am now laid off at the first of this month, because IBM didn't have any positions listed for my city, and I would have had to move for a short-term contract elsewhere (I have mostly mainframe and a couple years of Java/Web development), but I'm like so many Americans where I have a house and an employed spouse. IBM had me look at "remote" possibilities and I wouldn’t travel over 25%, but most of their positions require 100% travel and I found myself competing with people all across the U.S. I would always get back the "canned" response which was, "You do not have the qualifications" - even if I had had up to two interviews with the people! Now, I’m able to spend more time looking to the outside for jobs, but at forty-nine, I’m feeling a tremendous amount of built up age discrimination, and a lack of work experience with certain computer skills, but, financially, I have to keep looking for either a business analysis, mainframe or Junior Java position. -Anonymous-
  • Comment 11/22/05: I used to work for IBM. Left way back at the end of 92. No, I didn't take a buy out. I had been working for IBM since 84 and had seen how the company was beginning to change. So I had a little heart to heart with myself to decide what I wanted out of life. Working for a big corporation was not high on my list, although it had been at one time. So, I started to look into different fields. Realizing I was a geek at heart I starting looking at academia. Found a much lower paying job held my nose and took it. That was about thirteen years ago. Now after reading how low IBM has sunk I'm glad I made the change. I do look back on some of the glory days at IBM with fond memories, but I knew it was time for me to go. Guess the moral of my story is to follow your heart and gut.Sure you may have to take a cut in pay and bennies, but you will be happy. No money can buy that, so they say. -Anonymous-
  • Comment 11/25/05: I'm one of the many Canadian IBM employees laid off in June, excuse me, forcibly retired from IGS (AMS). I don't know how many others were let go although there appeared to be many and I do know it was a mix of layoffs and forced retirement. I also know that a few more were let go in July. I'm still actively looking for work because I can't afford to and I'm too young to retire. In October, another Canadian division sent out a note to employees requesting them to 'lure in' new employees. Seems like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing or else I was let go to meet an exec's reduced head count target. Too many jobs are going offshore. At some point in the future, these third-world employees are going to smarten up and ask for more money ... I wonder how IBM and so many other companies are going to cut costs then. -Anonymous-