As part of an IT consolidation project our entire staff has been absorbed by IBM. I work as an developer and DBA. We have one year guaranteed employment.
The pros are that I get to telecommute 100% of the time. But I feel uneasy as I think that they are going to start letting people go once a year is up.
Who else has had this happen to them? What was your experience? Did you stay or leave for other opportunities?
Worked on state of georgia account for 9'yrs. made it though Many rounds of cuts same story as about used abused and lied to. Saw many many coworkers go very talented seasoned people 40's and 50's so if your not 25 get out now - we were cored. And forced to take on extra work unreasonable deadlines and dropped form 40 folks supporting the entire state computer systems down to 4. Yes 4. And thought we as our highly skilled team of 4 on call every other week - no overtime pay and no time to take flex. And unwritten rule to work some weekends and holidays when outages occur. Then they pulled 2 of our cards of the 4. March 2. I wasted no time didn't muck with the right management garbage paid by IBM and hit the streets full bore and found my new job in 4 weeks - I never looked back - now get paid on call and paid OT work and yes I'm exempt status salaried It's just how it should have been and ibm broke who knows how many laws making us work like that - I learned a lot worked with very knowledgeable people. But god bless and help the last 2 that aRe there now - your cards coming as soon as they get columbia Missouri kids up to speed on what we do/ did. So all that to say. Start working on your resume now don't mess around and when your ibm boss pings ya in same time and says can I call you for a minute. Your ready willing and have a plan - hit the ground running don't look back and use every waking moment applying for the Job YOU want and not waiting on one to roll around when the dust settles and sun sets you will be very happy
"the employees need to be responsible for their own career" is the biggest scam ever - they shift the responsibility to you and they retain all power - always ends up in tears
After our rebadge experience 20% cuts for 4 years then bring in an offshore team and train them to do your work. Then we get fired for no reason. It's been a hellish experience.
IBM leadership will say, there is so much opportunity, and the employees need to be responsible for their own career, but in the end, we worked harder and smarter every year and still got R/A'd.
The unwritten policy is to get rid of all rebadges (RBs) but timing will be different based on a number of factors. The RBs who are critically important to the account (experience, relationships, knowledge, influence) will be kept for the duration of the contract that IBM has with the company. RBs who are not vital to the account will be kept until all transition activities to IBM are done.
Anyhow, the IBM flag on your resume will look good (or mostly good – it’ll hurt you if you go the startup route though) but you will hate your time here as they do not care about employees, that’s kind of an open policy so nobody should be surprised.
Very quickly, you will realize that you are just a number on some spreadsheet and that the show will go on with or without you regardless of how much you contribute, so be careful here. With the amount of work you will be doing here, and trust me on this one, you will be miserable and very quickly you will realize that you’d be much better off going somewhere else as you’ll be underpaid.
If the account cannot make you busy, they will lay someone off and double your workload, if they cannot do that, they will find stuff from other accounts and they will put it on your plate.
They will fill your plate so full, it’ll not be funny. Forget merits, bonuses, etc – they will screw you on this for about 2 years minimum, it’s not going to get much better after 2 years though. Wait a bit, see what happens but be ready to jet promptly…
Run away now save yourself the agony of working for this company that only cares about upper management bonuses. It happened to my team as you described we got absorbed 5 years ago ,15 in all. Every year after the first year was over 2 or more people were let go. IBM giving the customer the lie that work was being done by a team in Costa Rica or Argentina when in reality the remaining people just took on more and more work hoping to save their job. It didn't work as of the last RA two remain and the original company is now taking back the system due to the poor job IBM in now doing.
If you read the comments here, on the Watching IBM facebook page, and on Cringely's articles, you'll see that in the past others in your situation were let go after the time period. So, that's highly likely. Take all you can get for the year you are with IBM. Keep your resume up to date and don't want until day 365 to start shopping yourself around. If you don't want or need the stress, start looking now.
If you can work from home, your job can be done from India.......