IEEE Reviews

The IEEE Management Council more closely resembles a group of warring kings battling for the Iron Throne than a leadership team of a major association. Their actions over the past decade have cultivated an environment where enterprise level faction wars dictate long-term strategy and senior staff hold prized volunteers in their pockets, like so many nickels and dimes. I work in IT for a company that claims to advance technological innovation. Who's leading the charge? A Chief Information Officer who has never before held a job in technology. Ever. She's an accountant who made it to the top of IT the same way Sarah Palin almost made it to the WhiteHouse: shortsighted, politically-motivated decisions. Since her promotion I've witnessed a mass exodus of technical talent, considerably reduced Towers Watson employee engagement scores, and new department priorities that trade things like patch management and firewall updates for what seem like favors to those who helped her rise to the top. In this past year we have learned to keep our mouths shut if we have concerns about a project or deployment. Even our Senior Directors smile and nod at directions that defy basic enterprise technology best practices. To quote a member of our leadership team, "We're doing it to pay the mortgage." I'm sure this sounds like an exaggeration of the truth. It's not. It's easy to look at LinkedIn and see the technical staff who have left IEEE in the past year. The sad thing is it's not getting better. It's getting worse. Each year we take the Towers Watson Employee Engagement Survey and inform IEEE's leadership of the challenges we face in our work environment. It's the same story year after year: the results depict the dysfunctional environment I describe. And the problem is at the top.

Ethnic nepotism thrives hard in IT (you know who you are). If you are "IN", you can get ahead by just showing your face to the business and then receive all the credit. Sexism and bullying exists here like it's the 1970s, if you are so unlucky as to report to THAT specific ethnicity. Incompetent HR that is powerless and does not defend the employee. I wonder how many more lawsuits they will just continue to pay off...good job guys. The CIO is a joke, but that's not the only joke in IT. He sits around in his office with the door shut, he's anti-social and unapproachable. He has been great at destroying morale and running IT to the ground. People get moved around all the time and poor performing employees that were once demoted find their way to the top once again or in roles that they are completely not skilled for. Intra/inter-department relations and communications are disjointed. And as for Leadership...wait what leadership? It's like a bunch of over-sized children playing boss. Ego wins over logic every time, for most in the management roles. Pretty much what they say goes, especially in R&D. And then there is the off-shore side of IEEE...don't get me started. Management there is as corrupt as a third-world country. Somehow the company gets listed as a top place to work, I don’t know about that and I wonder who is paying off who. This place is not flexible in any sense and definitely not a workplace to be proud of. Even the cafeteria workers are dropping like flies. I would say if you are unemployed and about to get on government assistance, take a job at IEEE. Otherwise, your time and skills are more appreciated elsewhere.