C# Devs Needed - 3 Years Experience

[kingshuk]

Worked with IBM jointly on projects for the last 12 years. Believe me, you'd never want to work for them in the UK.

I thought IBM Hursley lab was nice. They do some good product development work there - IBM JVM/JDK, MQSeries, Via voice etc. What was it you didn't like?

Misys are another body-shop with a bad rep.

They have a good retail banking product stack (health care products too but don't know much about that). From what friends working there tell me - big chunk of the work is still done here. So why do you say body-shop? Were you in their 'services' division?

[dkennedy1001]

Worked with IBM jointly on projects for the last 12 years. Believe me, you'd never want to work for them in the UK.

Hi nomadd,

Just wondering what you found wrong with IBM out of curiosity? Im with a rival consultancy and in banking (albeit thinking of leaving hence why im on here) so would be interested to hear.

[nomadd]

Hi nomadd,

Just wondering what you found wrong with IBM out of curiosity? Im with a rival consultancy and in banking (albeit thinking of leaving hence why im on here) so would be interested to hear.

Well, to qualify my comments, I think IBM - like many of the other companies I and others have mentioned on this thread - were once a great company to work for...

But, let's be honest, it's all about the "bottom line" in these companies these days. And that means most, if not all, of their design and development, etc. work has been offshored for cost reasons.

I know many long-time, i.e. 20 years plus, IBMers who have seen the place change dramatically over the last few years; as one of them put it to me: no-one can stay in the labs doing research these days, we are all pushed out onto a paying customers sites, whether we like it or not. If we don't like it, we are told where the door is.

And they are paid peanuts for being there. And are forced to work very long hours, with no overtime pay. I worked with IBMers (and all the other large consultancies) at Tesco, PWC, Marsh Insurance, numerous Banks and Finance Houses, etc. Their staff have all been highly overworked and poorly underpaid; and none of them have been happy with it - in fact they've all told me how "lucky" I was to be a contractor... And they've all been treated like dirt by the clients, as the clients know they can't say anything back for fear of upsetting IBMs Account Managers; those same clients never tried it on with me, as they knew what they'd get back in return...

I think the "starry-eyed" view that some people still have of certain companies is misguided. As I say, in 21 years of contracting (plus another 3 permie), I've worked with most of these outfits. And each of them today is just a body-shop, looking to fleece their permies for all they are worth, until they are burnt-out and tossed aside. And the great "benefit packages" - i.e. final salary pension, 13 day working fortnights, 3 months per year off for research, etc., etc. - have all long since been dropped from all the companies I know who used to offer such incentives in order to stop their staff leaving. In other words, what's left to stay for?

Still, that's just my two cents... If someone does have that "dream job" (Google, maybe? Although even they seem to have dropped their once great working practices..) then I'm all ears. All I can say in my defence is that I've worked with most of these companies and they didn't seem that great to me; and nor have they seemed that great to the permies who toil for them. But then that might be just the misguided perspective of a old, hardcore contractor.

[Moscow Mule]

Worked on-site at Sony. All the interesting work is done overseas, so scratch them.

Worked with IBM jointly on projects for the last 12 years. Believe me, you'd never want to work for them in the UK.

Misys are another body-shop with a bad rep.

I think you need to do a bit more trawling.

No that's not my experience.

I was recruited out of uni to design micro chips for Sony - interesting and bleeding edge at the time.

I know loads of people who work for IBM UK. Nice people who enjoy their jobs.

Misys - plain wrong. Summit, Opics, Midas, Equation, Bank Fusion - all Misys products.

[d000hg]

I know (a bit) someone who works for IBM. Apparently he loves it - inbetween playing basketball etc he mnages to get some work done.

No idea where he's located though.