I wish I was being facetious, but I really don't think I am. IBM hired extensively from my university, I know people who worked there or adjacent to IBM in industry.
They hired the bottom of the cohort (computer science/software engineering) at university and didn't hire anyone who could code. They emphasised communication over technical ability (fine, ok), but their style of communication is business buzzwords in slide decks, not substance. They are keen on business understanding, but that's not product thinking, understanding systems, or the limitations of solutions or anything like that, it's marketing, it's how can we look good.
A friend of mine worked for a company who regularly tidied up IBM messes. He was brought on to a project that had been run by a 5 person IBM team for a year. After a year they had detailed requirements for a system that no one wanted. His team of 3 spent 2-3 weeks building a boring CMS on top of Postgres and S3 and the client were ecstatic because it solved the problem they'd had for years.
The tech talent at IBM still exists, but it's doing the quantum computing research, or developing their mainframe or server business. The rest is a below average consultancy company.
I got a message from IBM CIC (customer innovation center). The HR lady was very rude, was looking for somebody with 6 more years than me and was disappointed by the fact that my yearly salary of the time was waay out of budget.
After that experience:
- a guy came for an interview, had been working in such place (IBM CIC). that guy had been studying agriculture (with a degree) but pivoted to computer science. he was okay-ish, but had limited experience outside of the power-point level competencies (some-times you have to come up with creative ideas)
- a colleague had worked in CIC. they really hire pretty much anyone and throw them at the customer. which basically means that it's a good place to get your foot into the industry, but you should be aiming at leaving as soon as you get any hands-on experience
Apaprently unless you work for the real IBM (doing research, ideally, or research-related stuff) you're working in a glorified sweat-shop.
I totally believe you. Here in nl IBM recently f'd up a storage layer beyond recovery in a series of really dumb moves going from 'minor problem' to 'extensive, unrecoverable dataloss for large number of customers'.
After messing it up someone thought that maybe they should call in people who actually know this stuff but by then it was way too late. Highly annoying, that a brand that used to be associated with reliability is now pretty much a guarantee for pretty marketing, expensive suits and some disaster in your future.
University of Southampton/ECS, in the UK. It's understandable as IBM have a large campus about 30 minutes away in Hursley near Winchester. I know 2 people who interned there and whos fathers also worked there, 3 who were hired (plus more from my course).
They would run tours for undergrad CS students where we'd get on a coach to Hursley, tour around some flashy mainframes behind big windows, have a talk from someone senior, and then hear about their hiring/internship processes.
The course is what you make of it. It's possible to scrape through the compulsory programming modules in the first 2 years with poor programming skills, and then by careful choice of modules and leaving the coding to others in group work, get by without really being able to code. They will have needed to code during the first few years to some extent, but can mostly get away with not coding in later years if they go for modules that skew towards maths or academic research.
When I say "unable to code" here I mean unable to produce working solutions to problems in a professional environment. I'm sure these people can get a few ifs/loops together in Java.
Because the course is what you make of it, there are plenty of excellent programmers by the end, and the department has a good relationship with some great grad programmes at companies like ARM, Google, Microfocus, the finance industry, etc. IBM just look for a different kind of student.
They hired the bottom of the cohort (computer science/software engineering) at university and didn't hire anyone who could code. They emphasised communication over technical ability (fine, ok), but their style of communication is business buzzwords in slide decks, not substance. They are keen on business understanding, but that's not product thinking, understanding systems, or the limitations of solutions or anything like that, it's marketing, it's how can we look good.
A friend of mine worked for a company who regularly tidied up IBM messes. He was brought on to a project that had been run by a 5 person IBM team for a year. After a year they had detailed requirements for a system that no one wanted. His team of 3 spent 2-3 weeks building a boring CMS on top of Postgres and S3 and the client were ecstatic because it solved the problem they'd had for years.
The tech talent at IBM still exists, but it's doing the quantum computing research, or developing their mainframe or server business. The rest is a below average consultancy company.