Pros
Hires good people; decent but not great work environment; opportunity to do different types of work; exposure to leading edge technologies; solutions focus (rather than narrow one-product-line firm) (except as noted below).
Cons
Top management: Very greedy (pump-and-dump stock; huge profits by selling stock they didn't buy but were awarded). Very short-term oriented. Lack respect for individual, treat ordinary employees almost with comtempt. Downright unpatriotic (especially Palmisano) with respect to keeping jobs and production capability in USA. Despite fancy words and speeches, not particularly customer-focused. Not particularly effective communicators. Lack strategic vision. Exploit technological trend-of-the-moment rather than leading, despite best research organization in the industry. Avoids risk-taking. Needs more outsiders and some ordinary employee-shareholders on Board Of Directors. Top half dozen or so should be replaced, especially Palmisano. That alone would boost morale and productivity immensely. Company: Extremely bureaucratic. Incredible amount of reporting, paperwork, meetings, impairs productivity. Only gets worse when times are tough, impairing productivity all the more, making situation worse rather than better. Strategy: Growth and profitability, while decent and better than many firms in recent years, has been largely through acquisition rather than 'organic' growth. Lacks long-term vision for systems leadership, though services strategy has been largely effective. (This has come at a cost of great pressure on the management and employees of the services businesses in terms of work-life balance and need/ability for self-education to keep up with technology changes.) (An exception to the 'effective' comment: the high-end consulting business has not been managed well; for example, many of the best people acquired from PwC became very dissatisfied, early, and left--one wonders if IBM top management ever understood this business and ever will. It's fundamentally different from technical consulting.)
