My experience working with IBM by an anonymous employee.

Like many other GTS employees, I became an employee when my company decided to outsource IT to IBM. At the time it was sold to us as a great chance to work for IBM, a prestigious American company with a long history of innovation.

One year later the reality is that any job that can be shipped to India, will be. Also, that layoffs would continue until the remaining employees are pushed to their absolute limit. A dammed if you do (get fired) or don’t (get fired) situation.

Promised to us by IBM before and during the transition was that our time with the former company would be carrying over and this applied to severance packages if we were laid off. IBM is now giving employees 1 month severance regardless of their many years of service.

The layoffs: my line manager sits down with the many people being laid off but one stands out to me. One of the employees being laid off sits there anxiously while the line manager reads from his HR approved or written script. The moment feels so very surreal as she has worked hard like many others. The line manager reads the script as coldly as he can he can muster since in the past they have been co-workers and friendly. He gets to the part about the severance, which she is expecting several months of severance pay and the line manager explains to her that despite promises made to her she would only get a 1-month severance. Running through her head is probably family, bills, her health, and many more personal thoughts as she starts to weep. Her years of service meant nothing to IBM and the company that sold her off/out.

In other cases, employees were sent to India to help train new helpdesk or network engineers. I am sure many of the employees that went to India to help train the staff in India thought they would be spared from layoffs for their service and willingness to go above and beyond. So much for above and beyond, they were all fired as well. I find this to be so very cold blooded. If IBM knows they would fire these employees anyway then why inconvenience them by making them go half way around the world separating them from their families for weeks? IBM is calculated and cold-blooded.

Is your company selling IT to IBM? I have advice for you – RUN. They will fire you when they get what they need from you and if they don’t fire you, your workload will be tripled in most cases. You will not receive fair raises and the occasional couple of hundred-dollar bonus will just be to somehow justify Ginny and other executive’s ridiculous multi-million dollar bonus while company continues on its downward spiral.

Are you considering outsourcing your IT to IBM? I urge you reconsider. The service provided is poor at best. The helpdesk is very difficult to understand and most cases just not knowledgeable on your company. The support provided is minimal, slow and many levels below the support previously provided locally. Buckle down, sit with IT management. You will need to increase productivity from them and reduce waste where you can. Automate some services where possible and streamline what you can because IBM support is in most cases a serious downgrade.

IBM will entrench themselves in your company making it very painful for you to leave them so even at the end of the contract you will feel pain when you leave. You will most likely be using their servers, VPN, mobile phone management, helpdesk, employees, and cloud storage. Leaving will be almost as painful as the 5-10years spent with IBM.

Our users are the ones who are suffering. Longer wait times, a helpdesk they can’t understand and that doesn’t understand them, much fewer local technicians to help them, massive downtimes and slow turnarounds. The users complain non-stop about the support but they and you will be powerless to improve it once it is outsourced.

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