New Hires/College grads who were laid off from IBM GBS in Spring 2018.

Where are you today? And how do you feel about IBM now?

For context, back then, IBM overhired a significant amount of young professionals and let go a sizable chunk of them. They also almost postponed start dates for the class of 2018 by a year. As a result, IBM has been blacklisted by many universities from OCR.

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I was in the dreaded Baton Rouge group. When we were hired, we were given 3 weeks to get ready for an assignment. 1.5 years in, some folks were still not staffed. We were not given managers, or guidance initially. When the guidance came, it was my resource manager yelling at me to essentially beg to partners for projects. Although I did not experience it myself, there was a absurd amount of racial discrimination when handing out assignments.

When I finally was given a project, I comprehensively knocked it out of the park. I exceeded all expectations and was praised by VPs for stellar reviews. Then I was placed on a ‘blacklist’ by my SRM to not give me any assignments. The rationale was that I was safe and too skilled to be in trouble so I can live without billable hours but Band 8’s were starving.

I got fired. The SRM called me unskilled. A partner called me retarded. I still sometimes cry as I worked my ass off for that job. I was a community college student and believed that working harder was the solution to everything. I was right up until that point.

I have serious mental health issues now. I am suicidal on bad days. My career is recovering but I cannot get over the sinister nature of the people I worked with. Why were they soo cruel to me? The ‘Be Equal’ banners they held up at the think conference was laughable. They really ruined my career.

Having said that, I meet a lot of friends there, without whom, I would have killed myself by now. Silver lining I suppose.

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Thanks you D3, appreciate it!!

I realized I didn’t answer you question, IBM has some fantastic people. They are smart bright and kind. There are still so many of these people working there and are successful. I am truly happy for them. I envy it, no doubt. What I found confusing was the lack of responsibility. Everyone was keen to point fingers at each other. No one knew what to do. Out of college I was expecting so much and was thrilled to work in a company like IBM. I didn’t expect the scale of the disorganization to be that absurdly high. Leaders who we complained to about the obvious racism, replied by that doesn’t exist in IBM and you should just deal with it. When we complained to about not getting an experience, they said IBm doesn’t treat employees like that. What is worse is that those people are still employed!! Everyone was happy to point the finger at Ismail Amla, but they did not take a single look at their own actions in this fiasco.

I wish my friends, who are still there from the 2018 class, get promoted quickly and institute a systematic cull of those leaders. They should not be anywhere near career development of young folks.

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THIS!!! Entirely this!!! IBM definitely fosters a 'finger pointing' culture and the company is so freaking disorganized

likesmart

Doubled my B6 salary so we goodddd

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Glad to hear it got better after leaving. I joined IBM after the mass layoff but have since left. All I can say is, yes, they "learned" from that debacle. However, it doesn't change the fact that IBM sees all of it's employees as dispensable 'resources'.

Grass was truly greener after leaving .

I started in 2018 and have been worried about this since starting. Was a total mess.. for those who got let go, I hope the best! Ibm is not a great place to be and I’m trying to leave asap

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Yup, get out while the market is hot or switch teams.

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Props to the schools for banning them from OCR… my co pulled a very similar move in 2016— massively overhired and didn’t sell enough business. Started laying off fresh MBA grads a mere NINE MONTHS after joining. I hadn’t started yet, mercifully, but there were a lot of scars from that experience

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