1. Stagnant Career Growth: No promotions unless you complete 3+ years in the same role; regardless of performance, client feedback, or internal contributions.
2. Minimal Compensation Growth: Year-on-year salary hikes have drastically reduced to 3-5%, compared to 12-15% in earlier years. Most benefits are enjoyed by the management, while employees are left with minimal increments.
3. Manipulated Performance Narratives: The CEO often claims the company is exceeding performance targets until Q2. However, as soon as appraisals approach in Q3, the narrative suddenly shifts to “underperformance,” resulting in withheld promotions and hikes.
4. Unrealistic Workload: Especially in teams like IBM, employees are expected to manage 15+ clients per quarter. Regular working hours exceed 10+ hours daily with no overtime pay or comp-offs. Shockingly, this is stated openly in the company handbook.
5. No Work-Life Balance: Flexibility is a buzzword used to justify unreasonable working hours, especially for employees outside North America. Internal calls are often scheduled late at night, and requests to reschedule are dismissed with, “We offer flexible timing, you must be available.”
6. Lack of Recognition: Unless you directly work under a VP, your efforts often go unnoticed. Recognition programs are practically non-existent.
7. Siloed Work Culture: Cross-team collaboration simply doesn’t exist. Teams operate in complete isolation.
8. Disconnected Leadership: Senior management lacks empathy, culture, and core values. Employee well-being is not a priority.
9. Broken Promises: From hiring commitments to internal mobility to rewards-very few promises are kept.
10. Double Standards in Cost Cutting: Company-wide meetings have been cancelled multiple times to "cut costs," while leadership continues to enjoy luxury vacations (company-paid, often with +1s). The difference between cost-saving and exploitative practices is clearly misunderstood.
11. Questionable Client Practices – CVA Program: Leadership is aggressively pushing clients to adopt the IBM CVA program, without full transparency. Key changes are downplayed, and clients are not clearly informed that their data will be shared with IBM. The focus seems to be more on revenue generation than on client interests or data privacy.
