SoftLayer Reviews

3.0

51% would recommend to a friend

(240 total reviews)
avatar

Lance Crosby

57% approve of CEO

42% positive business outlook

SoftLayer has an employee rating of 3.0 out of 5 stars, based on 240 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The SoftLayer employee rating is 22% below average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

240 reviews
1.0
8 Jun 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Manager and team lead are about the only people in the company who even care. Some really smart people here who don't get challenged enough and are burned out and just give up.

Cons

Pay is well below average No incentives to do better No raises no matter how hard you work (unless you count the joke of a yearly raise that took two years to get after over 9000 excuses by IBM) No evaluations for raises (unless you count the worthless yearly eval) No room to advance as other departments just sit on things forever playing the blame game. IBM proper treats us like trash and is EXTREMELY disrespectful to us. No one does anything about it though because no one cares. Benefits are a joke You'll never be taken seriously People who don't deserve anything will always get something, while you get swept under the covers for no apparent reason. Anyone higher than your immediate manager doesn't care about you or your problems at all, and they are too afraid to talk to anyone higher up because no one in this company has a backbone. Everyone just steps on everyone. Timelines are always promised and never met. Lies upon lies upon lies constantly by higher up the food chain, with an excuse for literally EVERYTHING. Been here two years and still haven't seen a CoL raise...never worked in a place that didn't give one. Priorities are beyond backwards. Apparently it's more important to put new carpeting in the office than pay us proper wages. Or at least make sure the men's in-office bathroom works for longer than a few days at a time. None of the departments work together, they all argue with each other and no one every knows what's going on. Do not waste your time working here....seriously. Just find something else to do. Seriously....you could stand on a corner begging for change and make more money than you'll be paid here.

1.0
13 Jan 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You get IBM on your cv, that's all.

Cons

Horrible bosses, constant backstabbing from other employees. The turn over rate is dreadful. I saw 15 people get fired in 15 months. They don't care at all about their employees or their customers. I have seen Customer data getting deleted and they don't take responsibility for it. Racist management. Horrible Pay.

4.0
4 Jul 2015

IBM is dead weight; cut the ties

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

o Free snacks, drinks, monthly cake, massages, etc (as everyone mentioned) o Pretty decent benefits in comparison to previous employers o Lots of infrastructure, which is great for seeing how things tick on a large scale o Very flexible with scheduling o Definitely has some incredibly smart people to learn from o Fast-paced in regard to technology, always adopting the newest hardware o Relatively stable o Accepting of alternate lifestyles o Wide range of software and hardware o Great documentation o Very low turnover rate There are probably many more things I can't remember.

Cons

o Poor past decisions for infrastructure design which were seemingly based on cost o Lack of power as a company; IBM always calls the shots, right or wrong o Heavy office politics, mainly in IBM o IBM looks down on the company as if we're beneath them o Constantly forced by IBM to make bad decisions, even if the entire company disagrees o Any customer with access to upper management in IBM gets whatever they want, no matter how insane, unethical, or unhealthy for the company it is o Large departments are out of touch (eg. Sales, support, internal) o Product additions are not announced to anyone -- You often learn about new products after a customer tells you o Lower level support management believes that we should go the extra thousand miles and provide what is in essence managed services o Lower level anything (support, build technicians) are treated terribly, paid terribly, and generally unhappy o No matter how much of a backbone someone has, IBM will break it o Future is very uncertain o Processes for anything IBM-related are incredibly convoluted, outdated, invasive, and downright painful o Separation between IBM employee tools and Softlayer employee tools o Less and less response to feedback from both customers and employees due to IBM policies o Office theft is a real thing -- keep your desk locked Fun fact: IBM used to have a similar cloud division. Used to, because some of the management running Softlayer now, ran it into the ground. TLDR:

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Glassdoor has 259 SoftLayer reviews submitted anonymously by SoftLayer employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if SoftLayer is right for you.