I have noticed an alarming amount of favoritism (and even nepotism in some cases) within GBS. Advantages in terms of job opportunities, perks like attending conferences, promoting people well beyond their level of capability with dubious promo cases are some things I’ve observed, Curious as to others experiences.
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My director has both children working at IBM
Yes yes and yes.
You have to figure out quickly at ibm whether you're favorites or not leave ibm/team othw your career is finished.
Also to the person who blatantly call out "indians", this isn't an ethnicity issue but an ibm one. Trust me, none of my leadership was indian (upto svp) and it had the same issue op described.
This captures the most enduring memory I have from my time at IBM. It’s not something I’ve ever experienced at other organizations. It’s a very strange thing that IBM doesn’t understand how demoralizing this is for its employees and how bad it is for business because they lose good people as a result.
Definitely exists, most incapable people promoted, doing high-level presentations but not able to actually understand or do real work. Meanwhile, we lost highly skilled people in our layoffs. Upper management doesn't care, it's all politics.
I see more correlation to favouritism with the increase of Indians in management.
I am just curious - do you think this is because of xPWC taking over GBS? It did not seem to be this way many years ago and then more and more PWC cronies took over leadership positions following the acquisition.
Has anyone experienced retaliation for speaking out with an alternative viewpoint? I’m in this situation now and would greatly appreciate advice
Why would you provide IBM with any ideas? The same way, why are so many people at IBM doing patents? If you have a great idea that deserves a patent, then you should resign, submit the patent and do something with it. Most IBM's patents are insignificant.
We’ve lost some great people on my team because of a culture of favoritism. One guy’s ideas get pushed by the manager and the rest of our contributions are ignored. Thing is, the favorite has never left IBM so he has no outside perspective. The rest of us are outsiders trying to propose new things because what we’re doing isn’t competitive, based on our actual experience. We’ve lost funding for training, conferences, etc because it is all funneled to one person and the manager. It’s just not right and I’m not sure what I can do about it. Many other groups know about the favoritism in my group.
Note that we are in an “innovation group.” The irony.
Promotions and raises only to the coveted “favorites.” Most of these “favorites” are undeployable because they are so reliant on whomever is sponsoring them. Have had this happen several times on my accounts. I ask for one mid-level person and I get him/her plus his/her manager, which breaks my budget and isn’t asked for to begin with. There’s several groups in GBS that my cluster will not work with because of this behavior.
Just one of many Glassdoor reviews about Nepotism
"Horrendous Culture of Failure, Nepotism and corruption"
Without a doubt, and it's absolutely disgusting.